December 2008 Archives

A Toast to My Readers

It's that time of year again, art-lings, when we ring out the old stories and ring in the new. (The CultureGrrl Countdowns for 2006 and 2007 are here and here.)

I'd first like to take this opportunity to thank you for your encouragement---in your intelligent written responses to what I've written, in your very tasty news tips, and in this blog's steadily increasing readership. With a few hours left in 2008, I'm just shy of 550,000 hits this year. I love being hit!

Speaking of your intelligent comments on my posts, I'll be posting some e-mailed reactions to my National Academy revelations in the New Year. But for now, no more revelations; just revels!

Also in the New Year, I hope some of you will consider decorating the dreary righthand column of CultureGrrl with attractive ads for museum shows, gallery shows, art books, periodicals, educational offerings and, let us not forget, the ever-popular Sardis Column Cuff Links. (I've just lost the Met Store.)

To remind you of why my work merits your support (or maybe of why it doesn't), here's a recap of Top CultureGrrl Stories of 2008, in chronological order, from earliest to most recent:

My Q&A with Philippe de Montebello
Broad-sided: Michael Govan on the Elusive Eli
My Antiquities Q&A with the Getty's Michael Brand: Life after the Givebacks
New Acropolis Museum: Marring the Marbles
Details of the Getty's "Confidential" Agreement with Italy
What's Gross About the "Gross Clinic" Deaccessions
Auctioneers Gone Wild? Unfair "Fair Market Value"
Universal World Heritage...Except When It's Rent-a-Show Time
Towards a Ceasefire in the Antiquities Wars: The Next Step (Part I)
Towards a Ceasefire in the Antiquities Wars: The Next Step (Part II)
Cultural Policy Memo to the New President: Revive Artist Fellowships
Sotheby's Loses $28.2 Million on Contemporary Art Guarantees
Ten Suggestions for Tom Campbell, Incoming Director at the Met
Stealth Deaccessions: National Academy Sells Major Works by Church and Gifford
NYS Regents Reverse Course on Desperation Deaccessions
LA MOCA Makeover: Parsing the Details of the Rescue Agreement
National Academy Lessons: The Fallacy of Deaccession-or-Die

Neil MacGregor

Can you imagine a U.S. newspaper's ever naming a museum director as its American of the Year?

Culture must be king in Great Britain.

The London Times has just designated the British Museum's director, Neil MacGregor, as its "Briton of the Year." Barack Obama was the Times' Person of the Year. This is the first time that the Times has bestowed such honors.

Rachel Campbell-Johnston, chief art critic of the Times, lauded MacGregor as "a man who had managed---by what often felt like charm and enthusiasm alone---to turn a financial basket case back into a cultural jewel....By emphasising the importance of an international community of inquiry..., he has helped to create a global society that is quite separate from others that constantly get caught up in the squabblings of government and politics."

All true. But the Greeks, Egyptians, and Nigerians, "squabbling" (respectively) over the Elgin Marbles, Rosetta Stone and Benin bronzes, might beg to differ.

The Times profile provides some interesting personal details:

He appears to have little interest in the trappings of his position. He is the first director not to live in a grand apartment on the premises of the British Museum. He owns few paintings---he was spoilt by his time at the National Gallery, he jokes. He turned down a knighthood, though he does not discuss it. And he appears to find his satisfaction and reward in the simple fulfilment of a civic duty.

As for Obama, the Times declared him to be "unusual among modern presidents in coming from the Northern urban Left." I guess if you string together enough modifiers, anyone can be unusual. The key thing about Obama, though, from the American perspective, is that he "comes from" a wide variety of places.

TOP: The important Frederic Church painting sold by the National Academy, "Scene on the Magdalene," 1854
BOTTOM: The lesser Church retained by the Academy, "Scene Among the Andes," 1854

At the end of my Q&A (posted yesterday) with the National Academy's embattled director, Carmine Branagan, she summed up her institution's rationale for selling two important paintings---a Frederic Church and a Sanford Gifford---to raise cash for operations:

When you have a very complex set of problems, which the Academy does, you need a solution that is as elegant and innovative as the problems are complex.

In truth, what the Academy has done---slicing pieces out of the heart of its distinguished collection of 19th-century American art---is neither "elegant" nor "innovative." The 183-year-old association has violated established professional principles, which stipulate that museums should only sell art to raise funds to buy other works of art. In reaching for the quick, easy fix, instead of undertaking the hard work of responsible museum stewardship, it has enriched its coffers at great cost to its reputation.

Making matters worse is the Academy's history as a serial deaccessioner in its struggle for financial survival. Although she has been roundly criticized by professional peers, Branagan refuses to say that art sales to finance operations won't happen yet again.

As suggested in Jori Finkel's Sunday NY Times article, many other art museums have been similarly tempted to sell art to defray expenses. Few (as far as we know) have succumbed. That parenthetical qualifier is necessary because one of the disturbing lessons of the Academy incident is that cultural institutions, seeking to avoid public outcry, may sell without telling. By the time CultureGrrl got the anonymous tip that led to my first published report on what the Academy had done, its secret sale to an unidentified private buyer was already a done deal.

Unless museums are required to give advance public notice of planned sales of significant works, we will never know if the few cases reported in the press are just the tip of the iceberg. Of this we can be sure: More museums will be tempted to try to get away with desperation deaccessions in these financially treacherous times.

In her description to me of how the Academy conceived of and executed its selling spree, Branagan unwittingly supplied a textbook "how-not-to" case study in deaccessioning. When it appointed Branagan last July as its leader during this difficult moment in its history, the Academy put its future in the hands of an administrator from outside the art museum world, who has demonstrated by her own words an inadequate understanding of the demands and responsibilities of her position.

Either Branagan, lacking an art background, didn't appreciate the importance of the works whose sale she recommended to the Academy's membership, or she pretended not to know their full significance to the collection. Either way, her conduct showed a blameworthy disregard for due diligence and accepted professional practice.

In my Dec. 4 interview with her in her office, Branagan unequivocally answered "yes" to my question of whether the Academy possessed a Church of importance equal to or greater than the one that it had relinquished.

In fact, as experts have confirmed to me, the sold work is far superior. The Academy's own 2004 catalogue of "permanent" collection works that were created between 1816 and 1925 describes "Scene Among the Andes" (the Church that the Academy still owns) as "less exuberant and more conventional in color, composition and handling than most of his larger Andes landscapes." Although I've reproduced the two Churches, above, at the same size, the one they sold is actually almost twice as large (28¼ by 42 inches) as the one they kept (15 7/8 by 24 inches).

As for the Gifford, Branagan said that she was "not sure" whether the Academy had another painting by the artist. In fact, it doesn't, as I was informed by the institution's former chief curator, David Dearinger, who strongly criticized the sales of both works.

What's more, Branagan suggested that selling the paintings (which the NY Times recently reported has raised $13.5 million) would be no great loss to the public, because "these works were all in storage." Dearinger countered that both works, particularly the Church, were frequently exhibited. That's corroborated by the entry for the sold Church in the Academy's collections catalogue (for which Dearinger was general editor), which reveals that it was shown in eight different Academy shows (most recently in 2000), as well as in exhibitions at many other venues, including the 1989 Church survey at the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

The Gifford was displayed in five Academy shows (most recently in 1995, according to the 2004 catalogue). It also was loaned to exhibitions at other venues, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Hudson River Museum and the Parrish Art Museum. Although Branagan says that the unidentified private-foundation purchaser of the paintings has promised to show them publicly, they have now left the public domain for private ownership.

UPDATE: I should also have mentioned that the Church and Gifford were featured in the Academy's 2006 Luminist Horizons exhibition, which traveled to three other museums.

Branagan's defense of the sales seems all the more problematic in light of her stated intention to use some of the proceeds to organize a permanent display drawn from the Academy's permanent collection---a presentation in which the sold Church would undoubtedly have played an important role and in which the Gifford would also likely have played a part. She is paradoxically trying to privilege the permanent collection by diminishing it.

The most troubling of Branagan's remarks was her response to my question as to why the Academy had not tried to improve its finances the old-fashioned way, through fundraising. She suggested that this had not been seriously attempted:

A fundraising structure has never been built here. In order to have a successful fundraising structure, you need innovative, relevant, resonant programming.

In fact, the Academy has had a robust public exhibition program for some time. Branagan, who arrived in July after stints with the National Audubon Society, New World Symphony and American Craft Council, told me that her areas of expertise are fundraising and marketing---skills that she should have immediately put to good use for the Academy. Sales by cultural institutions of important holdings should be contemplated, if at all, only as a last resort, after all income-producing alternatives have been exhausted.

In adopting the backwards strategy of "sell first, fundraise later," the Academy has an infamous predecessor in the New York Public Library. In recommending the much criticized 2005 sale of another Hudson River School painting, Asher B. Durand's iconic "Kindred Spirits," the library's Art Properties Committee had noted: "The idea of attempting an endowment campaign first, and then selling artworks later---if the campaign failed---did not gain much Committee support." But what if the campaign, spearheaded by a board consisting of some of New York's wealthiest and most prominent movers-and-shakers, had succeeded, and the library could have retained the painting for the benefit of its visitors?

The most dramatic (and most specious) argument advanced by deaccessionists, including Branagan, is that if they don't sell art to fund operations, their institutions may cease to exist. Recent events have exposed the "deaccession-or-die" justification as self-serving and hollow. Both Fort Ticonderoga (which wanted to sell a major Thomas Cole, among other works) and Fisk University (which still wants to sell to Alice Walton a half-share in its Stieglitz Collection) ominously warned that if they didn't convert art into quick cash, they would likely go broke.

Having been prevented by public outcry (Ticonderoga) and a court decision (Fisk) from following through on these disposals, both institutions managed to do what they had warned they couldn't do: They raised the money needed to keep functioning without the benefit of art-sale proceeds. (Nevertheless, Fisk is still pressing its legal case on appeal.) Cultural institutions and universities with art holdings should no more consider selling collections to defray expenses than libraries would consider selling books off their shelves for that purpose. These objects don't merely relate to their mission; they are essential to it.

Instead of desperation deaccessions, hard-pressed institutions should embrace furious fundraising. When push came to shove, Fisk and Ticonderoga succeeded. If it revamps its governance and reconfigures its operations, putting itself in line with professional artworld practices, the National Academy can begin to regain the confidence of potential donors and perhaps even of the professional organizations---the Association of Art Museum Directors and the American Association of Museums---that have harshly censured it.

If that doesn't happen soon, no amount of deaccessioning will save it.

Rubens, "Samson and Delilah," ca. 1609-10, National Gallery, London
Purchased in 1980 under Sir Michael Levey's directorship

Sir Michael Levey, respected director of the National Gallery, London, from 1973-1987, died yesterday at 81. In his appreciation for tomorrow's Guardian newspaper, Terence Mullaly writes:

It was while he was at the National that Levey brought in the intelligent, if controversial, policy of cleaning and restoring the pictures in the collection. Subsequent judgment has vindicated the vast majority of even his most controversial decisions about conservation. Levey taught us to look at Old Masters as those who painted them had intended.

He also exhibited skill in uniting very different and exacting demands. He deftly combined planning for the future of the gallery and good administration with catering for both the public and his own staff. He was lucky with his trustees and, as a result, both the general public and scholarship benefited.

He was a prolific author with wide-ranging expertise in European old master paintings. He also wrote on music, published three novels, and acquired major works---including paintings by Altdorfer, Rubens (above) and Monet---for the museum. As Christopher White reports in the Independent, he also "played a leading role in the long and controversial planning of what would eventually become the Sainsbury Wing."

Marc Mayer

I've been quite late getting around to mentioning the Dec. 9 appointment of Marc Mayer, director of Montreal's Museum of Contemporary Art (and before that, deputy director of the Brooklyn Museum), as the new director of the conflict-ravaged National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, where Mayer hopes to restore peace and harmony after assuming his post on Jan. 19. (Since the beginning of this month, CultureGrrl has been pretty much "all LA MOCA/National Academy, all the time," dropping the ball on other stories.)

The NY Times has also been quite late picking up this story: Today's long article by Ian Austen goes into great detail about the place's shocking dysfunctionality, which came to light half a year ago and was revealed in staff e-mails, filed in court, that apparently were not fit for quotation in a family newspaper.

Happily, Paul Gessell of the Ottawa Citizen, who has been following this drama from the beginning, filed a timely piece Dec. 9 on Mayer's appointment, focusing on the new director's optimism going forward, rather than on the institution's past miseries (which included a nasty dispute between the museum's outgoing director, Pierre Théberge, and its deputy director, David Franklin).

Gessell reports:

Mr. Mayer said he has never met Mr. Franklin, who retains his job as deputy director, and is "reserving judgment" on this leading expert on Italian Renaissance art. "All I know is he is one of the most gifted curators in the country, and I always give gifted people the benefit of the doubt."

Sounds like a good start to me. I also enjoyed Mayer's rollicking From the Director essay on his the Montreal museum's website. But I particularly liked Marc's remark reported at the end of Austen's Times piece:

He added that he would probably make one bureaucratic change fairly soon after taking over.

“I may institute a different kind of approach to business correspondence within the gallery,” he said, laughing.

Laughter is always good medicine. A sense of humor could be just what's needed to begin dispelling the "toxic" atmosphere described in the flurry of court papers engendered by the Gallery's in-fighting.

Memo to Jeremy Strick: I hear that Montreal is looking for a new contemporary museum director. Parlez-vous français?

Too important to sell from the Suydam Collection:
John Frederick Kensett, "The Bash Bish," 1855, National Academy Museum 

Below are key excerpts from my conversation on Dec. 4 with Carmine Branagan, then interim director (now director) of the National Academy, in which she patiently and candidly addressed my questions on the National Academy's secret deaccessions of Frederic Edwin Church's "Scene on the Magdalene," 1854, and Sanford Robinson Gifford's "Mount Mansfield," 1859.

I will be referring to her comments in a subsequent post on the conclusions to be drawn and the lessons to be learned from this regrettable episode, which has further compromised the already shaky future of this venerable institution.

Here's the interview:

Q: Who bought your two paintings [the Church and the Gifford]?

A: I can't say. They were sold privately and they will be hung publicly....I frankly don't know who they were sold to.

Q: Where will they be publicly hung?

A: That's to be determined. They were sold to a foundation. They may be on loan or they may be given [to the institution that will show them publicly].

Q: How long will they be hung publicly: Forever? For two months?

A: I don't know.

Q: It could just be a short-term display?

A: Probably not. It will probably be an extended long-term loan.

Q: Do we know if it's going to be in New York?

A: We don't know that.

Q: In an art museum?

A: Probably....The seller has an agreement with the dealer that says it will be hung publicly. [I subsequently learned that the sale was handled privately by Sotheby's, the auction house.]

Q: Was that at your behest?

A: It was a request.

Q: A request but not a stipulation?

A: It was a request.

Q: The dealer hammered out an ironclad agreement that it would be hung publicly?

A: Yes. I think the important thing is the reason that this was done. It's in the context of moving the institution forward and honoring the collection and the heritage of this institution and that's what we intend to do.

Q: Is this "it" for deaccessioning, or is it possible that along the way you may find there's more need [to sell again]?

A: You and I know that you never say "never." I would be foolish to say "never, never, never." But certainly my position and the position of the individuals who presented the possibility to the academicians [the Academy's artist-members who voted to approve the sales] is that unless you're ready to commit to moving the institution in a certain direction, then we recommend that you do not vote to deaccession, because you can't deaccession unless you have the intention of actually doing the right thing with these funds.

Q: Does Alice Walton have anything to do with the purchasing foundation?

A: I don't know. I can't comment on that really.

Q: Can you tell me what the other two paintings are that you are thinking of selling?

A: I'd rather not. The members know what they are. I just don't want to say....When they sell, we will say.

Q: What are the reasons for not saying now?

A: I just would rather not. [I subsequently learned from other sources that these two works are John White Alexander's, "Portrait of Mrs. Thomas Hastings," 1901, and Robert Blum's "Study for a Japanese Beggar," 1891.]

Q: Had you contacted the American Association of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors about this?

A: We went to them proactively, even before the vote had been taken, and had extensive and very cordial conversations with them about the situation. And we continue to be in discussion with them. [This interview took place before both organizations issued their censures---here and here---of the sales.]

Q: Wouldn't such sales violate their guidelines?

A: The fact that we're really not a traditional acquiring museum makes it difficult to adhere to a standard that is not part of who we are. [The Academy receives art from its artist-members. It doesn't acquire by purchase.]

Q: Was the Attorney General alerted to the sales?

A: We were advised by counsel that wasn't necessary.

Q: Since you hold these works in trust for the public, doesn't the public have the right to know what's happening?

A: I think I've been very candid with you about why [we did this]. As for the issue of the public, these works were all in storage.

Q: Is it fair to say that the works you are selling are the most important works from that collection [the trove bequeathed to the museum in 1865 by academician James Suydam]?

A: No.

Q: What are the most important works from that collection?

A: It depends on who you're talking to. The protocol for the decision was that it started with the curators and they determined the pieces that would not compromise the integrity of the collection. We had other pieces by that artist in the collection.

Q: Were they as good?

A: Yes. We have a [John Frederick] Kensett "Bash Bish" [above] that is absolutely spectacular and that is not being sold....I'm not sure if it's from Suydam. [It is.]  It was too important to the integrity of the collection. It's the best Kensett that we have.

Q: Why were the other two deemed expendable?

A: Because we have another Church.

Q: As good as or better than the one you sold?

A: Yes. It's part of the South American series.

Q: What 's the name of that one?

A: It might be "The Andes." [It's "Scene Among the Andes," 1854.]

Q: What about the Gifford?

A: I'm not sure about the Gifford---what else we have. [Actually, nothing.] But this was a curatorial decision. It [selling art] was on the table when I arrived. When you have resources and your resources are real estate and an art collection, I don't think it's any mystery about how you arrive at one thing or another....There was a period of time [under the previous director, Annette Blaugrund] where they started to consider selling the real estate, and the academicians were adamantly opposed to that. They did not want to sell the building. This was home.

Q: Why not just try raising funds the old-fashioned way, by fundraising?

A: A fundraising structure has never been built here. In order to have a successful fundraising structure, you need innovative, relevant, resonant programing.

Q: Do AAM and AAMD know that you have now sold those two works?

A: Not yet, but I'm in the process of writing a letter to them and telling them.

Q: Do you expect you will be booted out?

A: That remains to be seen.

Q: Did they indicate to you that if you sell works to do anything besides buy art, you can't be a member because those are their guidelines?

A: Their guidelines are no secret. Everybody knows what their guidelines are.

Q: So you would expect the answer to my question to be "yes," that they will "excommunicate" you?

A: I think there are many ways of looking at this. Is it necessarily appropriate for an institution like this to be a member of either of those organizations? Because we don't necessarily fit their profile of what you are going to do if you sell works. If you can't use the money to acquire, what's the alternative? Fundraising? But that's not an alternative because you need the cash infusion in order to build the infrastructure. It's a very challenging "Catch 22." This institution spent many, many months of discussing this with a sincerity and attention that I think needs to be respected. When you have a very complex set of problems, which the Academy does, you need a solution that is as elegant and innovative as the problems are complex.

COMING TOMORROW: "National Academy Lessons: The Fallacy of Deaccession-or-Die"

Jori Finkel

While you're waiting for my promised "deaccession-or-die" opinion piece (a companion post to yesterday's screed against AAMD's harsh punishment of the National Academy), today's required reading is Whose Rules Are These, Anyway? from tomorrow's NY Times "Arts & Leisure" section (online today). The estimable Jori Lee Finkel (who should use her middle name) hits most of the bases (but misses the NY Public Library and the New-York Historical Society) in a rundown of recently consummated or considered desperation deaccessions.

Finkel evenhandedly quotes opinionators on both sides of the question, giving the first and last words to Carmine Branagan, director of the Academy, whose sales were the news peg for Jori's story. I'll be giving the beleaguered Branagan a lot more words next week---a long Q&A post, derived from the conversation in her office that led to my breaking the Academy deaccession story. After giving the director her full say, I'll have my say on what she's done, in a subsequent post.

Meanwhile, my vote for best take from the Times article on the subject of deaccessions goes to Graham Beal, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, which despite its large, chronic deficits is not desperate enough to sell the public's patrimony. Finkel reports:

Mr. Beal said he often fields questions from new trustees about selling artworks: "Since we have four van Goghs, people say why don't we sell one of the van Goghs?"

"It makes perfect sense in the business world, where they're looking for assets to sell the way Ford sold Jaguar," he said...."If it were suddenly legitimate to sell artworks and use the proceeds for anything other than acquisitions," Mr. Beal contended, "there would be a wholesale cannibalization of many museums."

And while you're perusing Saturday's Times, don't miss the Op-Ed piece by William Ferris, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who wants Obama to appoint a cabinet-level Secretary of Culture. I think a concentration of power in one person over our nation's diverse cultural life is a misguided, anti-pluralistic notion. I would be happy to see a new WPA for the arts, but please spare me the Culture Czar!

National Academy's spiral staircase

To this point, I've been covering the National Academy deaccessions as a straight news story, keeping my opinions largely in check. (CultureGrrl readers are well aware that I customarily modify the noun "deaccession" with the adjective "deplorable.")

Even Carmine Branagan, who was the Academy's interim director when I first talked to her on Dec. 4 (and has since been named its director), was well aware of the hard line that I take on art disposals by museums.

Towards the end of our extensive conversation in her office, Branagan told me:

I've read your blog, so I know your position on this. It's easy to take that position. But when the work has not been hanging publicly, it's been in a storeroom, and the sale of this work makes it possible for other works to be put on exhibition, I think there's a very strong case for deaccessioning.

I have until now been holding fire, partly in the interest of bringing you all sides of this story and partly out of gratitude for the candor and respect that Branagan accorded to an interlocutor who she knew was likely to be unsympathetic towards her position. She hoped that by fully explaining her side, she could convince me that the financially strapped National Academy did the right thing by selling its important Church and Gifford as a step towards financial stability.

I remain unconvinced.

That said, I also think that the Association of Art Museum Directors overreacted in its unprecedented, harshly punitive edict instructing its members to deny the Academy loans of artworks and collaboration on programs. I agree that the Academy forfeited any claim to AAMD membership when it violated that organization's clear and appropriate strictures against applying proceeds from art sales to anything but art acquisitions. I think Branagan knew she was taking that risk and, unfortunately, she was willing to take it.

But I was as stunned as she was at how far AAMD went. Maybe I should be careful about what I wish for: Almost exactly a year ago, I called on the association's then president-elect, Michael Conforti, to "to put some real force behind AAMD's chronically wishy-washy 'Position Papers,'" particularly the 2007 statement (click the first item on the list) on "Art Museums and the Practice of Deaccessioning."

Despite my strong views against desperation deaccessions, I believe that blacklisting the Academy by asking professionals at the member museums to forego future collaboration with their colleagues at the infringing institution was a step too far.

A professional organization that seems to have no problem allowing its members to lend to exhibitions at commercial galleries (here and here) should not shun scholarly, worthy projects at the Academy, such as the current George Tooker and Albert Blakelock shows, which include loans from many AAMD members. The Academy's planned 2010 exhibition of Anders Zorn, John Singer Sargent and Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida in America (scroll to bottom) was also to have included loans from several AAMD institutions, including the one directed by AAMD president Conforti---the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.

As if to call attention to the importance of the Academy's endangered artistic enterprise, the NY Times' "Weekend Arts" today features the Tooker and Blakelock exhibitions in separate reviews. On the front page of the section devoted to visual arts, an image of a Tooker painting in the Academy's current exhibition illustrates Holland Cotter's reverie on art inspired by New York City light. On the inside pages, Karen Rosenberg belatedly reviews the Blakelock show, which (like Tooker) closes Jan. 4.

Rosenberg concludes her review with comments underscoring the distinctive contribution of the National Academy in calling attention to relatively neglected, unfashionable American artists:

It would be a stretch to say that Blakelock is a missing link between Thomas Cole and Jackson Pollock, but he was one of several figures who helped to nudge American art into the 20th century. For all its shortcomings "The Unknown Blakelock" makes that case. It also raises the question of how the Blakelocks of art history, undersung American artists, would fare without the custodial efforts of the National Academy.

Blacklisting the Academy will only hasten the demise of a venerable institution that fills a gap in the New York cultural scene and deserves to live. That said, AAMD has now sent a loud, forceful message to any other institutions that may be tempted to consider using collections as ATMs during this time of severe economic challenges.

Before sharing with you my views on the Academy's deaccessioning and its broader implications for the field, I need to provide you with some necessary source material---excerpts from my Dec. 4 interview with Branagan that informed my original National Academy story, which has since been picked up by the mainstream media.

COMING SOON: My Q&A with Carmine Branagan, Director of the National Academy

Thomas Eakins, "Wrestlers," 1899, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Sold in the 1970s from collection of the National Academy, New York

Both the NY Times and LA Times followed up yesterday on my National Academy deaccession story, revealing more details about the dysfunctionality of this institutional hybrid---a combination museum, school and artists' organization.

The NY Times's Robin Pogrebin followed me into director Carmine Branagan's office for an interview, where she managed to extract the exact amounts raised by the sale of the Church and Gifford ($13.5 million) and the hoped-for amount from future sales of two more works ($1.5 million). (Branagan would only tell me that the total amount was expected to be "around $15 million," with the preponderance already raised through the sale of the first two works.)

Pogrebin also delved deeper into the dissension in the Academy's ranks, talking to members of the institution's advisory board who had resigned in protest. What most struck me in her piece was the vitriol hurled by important figures from within the Academy's own family at the institution's artist-members. For better or worse, this is, after all, an artists' organization---by and for the creative class. Insulting them in the pages of the NY Times was neither a smart nor constructive move.

Pogrebin reports:

Robert A. Levinson, vice chairman of the [Academy's] advisory board, said the trustees met last week to discuss changing the academy's constitution so the academicians [artist-members] would no longer have financial control.

Mr. Levinson argued that artists are ill equipped to make financial decisions about the institution's future. "They just live in another world and don't understand fiduciary responsibility," he said.

It's not just non-artist board members vs. artists; it's also artists vs. artists. According to Pogrebin:

When asked how the Academy had landed in its current situation, [Richard] Haas [the Academy's vice president] allowed that some "somewhat intransigent age-75-and-over artists probably had something to do with it."

Those geezers!

By far the most entertaining National Academy story to date is Christopher Knight's tangled tale for the LA Times about the first of the institution's two prior deaccessions. (I discussed the more recent one, Richard Caton Woodville's, "War News from Mexico," here.)

As revealed yesterday by both Knight and Pogrebin, the first disposal, which occurred in the 1970s, was Thomas Eakins' "Wrestlers" above. Knight was pleased to discover this "terrific" painting now residing in his newspaper's hometown: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art acquired the painting last year, Knight reported, at the end of a circuitous route with five stops after it left the Academy. The first was the Columbus (Ohio) Museum of Art, which later sold it to acquire a collection of American Regionalist and Surrealist paintings from the 1930s.

What Knight doesn't mention [actually, he DID mention it; please see the correction below] is that LACMA's recent acquisition is the finished version of another Eakins oil already in its collection---an oil sketch with the same title and composition.

LACMA's online description of the ex-Academy picture shows just how important it is:

"Wrestlers" is Thomas Eakins's last completed genre painting, his last consideration of the male nude, and his last sporting picture. Considered in the trajectory of his career, from his first studies of the figure as a student and first rowing pictures completed in 1870, "Wrestlers" stands as a superb summation of some of the most significant themes of his career.

It is, LACMA says, "very much a spiritual self-portrait of a frustrated artist toward the end of his career." That makes it an apt symbol of the Academy's agonies.

CORRECTION: In my rush to get done with blogging (since no one is reading today, anyway), I somehow missed this sentence near the end of Knight's piece, in which he does indeed refer to LACMA's oil sketch:

LACMA has owned the oil sketch for the painting since 1927 when the museum was in Exposition Park---another study is in the Philadelphia Art Museum---and the two now have been happily reunited on Wilshire Boulevard.

Now that I've given proper credit, please deck my computer with boughs of holly and pass the eggnog.

You could call it, "The Graying of LA MOCA.

I've got nothing against the Fifties and Sixties Generations, who are now (or are fast becoming) the Over-60 Generation. (I'm not so far from that ripe age myself.)

But there's something weirdly disconcerting about restructuring a cutting-edge contemporary art museum by putting it under the supervision of a cadre of codgers (or "graybeards," as the LA Times' Christopher Knight dubs them). Maybe this is one way of signaling a sober sense of responsibility.

First and foremost among MOCA's éminences grises is its chief financial angel, Eli Broad. Although he has no plans to transition from being a "life trustee" to rejoining MOCA's board as an active member, he has clearly gained strong influence over the institution, as witness the fact that his foundation's spokesperson, Karen Denne, has been co-equal with MOCA's spokesperson, Elizabeth Hinckley (an outside publicist for the museum from the Rogers & Cowan media-relations agency) in today's announcement of the museum's administrative and financial changes.

What's more, the "Agreement Summary" included at the end of today's press release clearly bears Broad's imprint: It states that MOCA's board of trustees will be strengthened "to include a substantial number of individuals who share MOCA's vision for art and downtown Los Angeles." MOCA was not previously well known for its "vision for downtown Los Angeles." That's Eli Broad's and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's territory.

The future viability and direction of MOCA will in large measure depend on the as-yet-unnamed additions to its board. Today's announcement mentioned no deletions from the existing list, despite the current board's blatant failure to exercise effective financial oversight. Only director Jeremy Strick was required to fall on his sword.

Knight of the LA Times observed:

Tom Unterman, a venture capitalist who is MOCA co-chairman and longtime chair of the museum's finance committee, where the fiscal mess ought to have been halted years ago, should have bitten the bullet and stepped down too.

The not-so-young Charles Young, one of many new MOCA machers ("big wheels") who sport "emeritus" on the résumé, is the museum's new CEO. In answer to my expressed concern about whether MOCA could attract a distinguished art-oriented director to serve under a chief executive with little or no art-related background, Broad spokesperson Denne told me:

A new director will not report to Chuck Young. He will be CEO for a transition period. He said this morning [at MOCA's press conference] that he does not plan to do this job forever, and once he feels that MOCA is stable and its finances are in order, he will look to hand over leadership of the organization to a world-class director.

To my mind, that's got to be a near-term goal. MOCA can't become stable without distinguished, art-driven leadership. Young thinks otherwise. Edward Wyatt and Jori Finkel of the NY Times quote the new CEO as saying this of the director's search:

My advice will be to postpone it for some time, until things get to a point where you have an attractive opportunity to offer, where you could attract a better candidate than you could now.

Meanwhile, other MOCA-minders during the indefinite period of transition will be the four venerable veterans just named to its newly established advisory committee: Joel Wachs, former Los Angeles City Councilman and now the Andy Warhol Foundation's president; John Walsh, director emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum; John Lane, director emeritus of the Dallas Museum of art; and "financial advisor" Gary Cypres, who in the 1980s was an audit manager for Arthur Andersen & Co., subsequently worked in various finance-related capacities (bio here), but is best known for his collection of athletic memorabilia, now housed in his new Sports Museum of Los Angeles.

Wyatt and Finkel of the NY Times report that Cypres "is married to Kathi Cypres, a [MOCA] trustee," and CEO Young "is a longtime colleague of Mr. Broad."

The $75-million MOCA NOW fundraising campaign enjoys a head start: It anticipates some $22.5 million from the museum's board, with $15 million of the board's contribution to be matched by Broad (totaling $37.5 million). Assuming the board makes good on its share, that leaves another $37.5 million to go.

Broad has also pledged to contribute $3 million annually, over a five-year period, for exhibition support.

The eyebrow-raiser in the Agreement Summary is the announced plan to "exhibit MOCA's permanent collection widely, consistent with customary museum practices." Are those "customary practices" high-fee rental shows, designed to raise megabucks from sister institutions? Whatever happened to the idea, dear to Broad's heart, of permanently exhibiting some portion of MOCA's exemplary (but seldom displayed) permanent collection at home, for the benefit of the citizens of LA?

Perhaps spurned suitor Michael Govan can still be persuaded to install some of MOCA's permanent collection in the galleries of his space-rich, contemporary art-needy Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Given the allure of MOCA's undisputed masterpieces, this could be one way for LACMA and MOCA to collaboratively snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Here's LA MOCA's official announcement of its acceptance of Eli Broad's largess and of its planned reorganization. Here's the separate press release about the resignation of director Jeremy Strick.

At last, the (ex-)director Strick Speaks! (via the press release):

It has been an honor leading MOCA for nearly a decade. During that time, we demonstrated MOCA's international leadership, and received unparalleled acclaim in the museum community. Our exhibitions and catalogues received numerous awards and countless critical plaudits. We found new and inventive ways to engage diverse audiences through education programs and visitor services, hugely popular special events, a content-rich website, and groundbreaking partnerships with organizations throughout this community. It is my hope that MOCA will never waver from its commitment to quality and its determination to serve artists. That is the heart and soul of this institution.

And it is CultureGrrl's hope that MOCA will be able to find a director who can oversee programs and exhibitions with comparable vitality and quality to what was achieved under the Strick administration. The press release tells us that "chief curator Paul Schimmel will continue to direct the curatorial program." It also says that "the new management team and funding preparations [are] in place."

I hope that doesn't meant that MOCA has no intention of seeking an art-oriented director to act as co-equal or nearly co-equal with the newly appointed administrative head, Charles Young. The problem that could bedevil any director's search, if there is one, is that few potential candidates may be willing to accept a position as second-in-command to a CEO from outside the artworld. I am seeking clarification about the envisioned chain-of-command.

This is still a work-in-progress. With fiscally responsible management and an infusion of cash, the prognosis for MOCA is guardedly optimistic.

For the financial and organizational specifics of MOCA's new plan, see the detailed "Agreement Summary" at the end of the above-linked press release.

Charles Young, new MOCA CEO

Diane Haithman of the LA TIMES reports today that LA MOCA's has a new CEO and an Eli Broad bailout.

Charles Young, UCLA's chancellor emeritus and professor at its School of Public Affairs, is MOCA's new CEO. He was chancellor of UCLA from 1968-1997; president of the University of Florida from 1999-2004. Jeremy Strick is out. His replacement as director, who will be in charge of artistic affairs, is as yet unchosen. This sounds like a two-headed MOCA. Young's UCLA bio is here. (He's got Qatar connections.)

The agreement with Broad includes a 90-day window to "allow any responsible party to replace the Broad Foundation on identical terms." Sounds as if there's still some ambivalence on the part of the board about doing the deal with Broad.

Haithman reports:

In an interview Monday, MOCA board co-chairmen Tom Unterman and David G. Johnson said that museum trustees had pledged or promised more than $20 million in new gifts since the museum's financial troubles became public in November. The executives declined to name specific board members who were planning donations.

It sounds like the board chairmen are not following Strick out the door. More to come, after the press conference.

Eli Broad, MOCA rescuer

This press release just hit my inbox at 10:49 p.m., sent to me by Karen Denne, chief communications officer for the Broad Foundation:

MOCA to Announce Financial Improvement Plan, New Management

WHO: Tom Unterman (MOCA Board Co-Chair ), David Johnson (MOCA Board Co-Chair ), Eli Broad (Founder of The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation), Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (tent.), City Council President Eric Garcetti, City Councilwoman Jan Perry, New MOCA CEO To Be Announced

WHAT: MOCA trustees, local philanthropists and city leaders will hold a press conference to announce a plan to improve the museum's finances and introduce new management.

It looks like the Eli Broad option has won. The e-mail alert informed me that "Eli Broad will be available for interviews immediately following the press conference" where the new regime at LA MOCA will be announced. The event is scheduled to take place at 10:30 a.m., Los Angeles time.

Just when galleries are thinking about shutting down, NY dealer Ed Winkleman has announced [via] his forthcoming book, How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery.

It is scheduled to be offered in July by Allworth Press, a publisher of many nuts-and-bolts artworld books that was founded by art-law veteran and artists' rights advocate Tad Crawford. The original 1977 version of Crawford's Legal Guide for the Visual Artist (then published by Hawthorn Books but now offered, in revised form, by Allworth) has long resided on my bookshelf and informed my writing.

Winkleman is hoping that Crawford is right in his contrarian view that "now is actually a very good time to get such a book into the market, as now is when people who may want to open a gallery when the market turns up again should begin planning for it."

But an Allworth-published book more in tune with today's recessionary market could be Daniel Grant's Selling Art Without Galleries.

Sorry London, Moscow and Paris.

Women's Wear Daily reported that Chanel is cutting short at midpoint its planned six-city "Mobile Art"  tour of the futuristic pod designed by Zaha Hadid to display Chanel-commissioned art that was "inspired by Chanel's classic...quilted-style chain handbag" (above).

Even Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld apparently regarded the "inspired" art as uninspired. According to WWD, he commented that he had wanted to scrap the most recent stop of the tour, New York, unless New York artists were substituted (they weren't) for the international group of artists who had inaugurated the tour.

Lagerfeld told WWD:

I always thought the building was a sculpture. I prefer it empty.

Having already induced the Metropolitan Museum to compromise its curatorial integrity with a 2005 Chanel exhibition that, as I said in my NY Times Op-Ed piece, "was as much as an advertisement for Mr. Lagerfeld as a paean to Coco," Karl this past October and November made an even more unseemly commercial incursion into public land in Central Park for a pretentious, high-priced commercial promotion of Chanel handbags, called by NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, "a dubious undertaking [that] might have seemed indulgent a year ago," but today "looks delusional."

In both cases, the hosting venues should have known better.

Robert Anderson's portrait of President Bush, National Portrait Gallery

At least he still has his sense of humor:

"I suspected there would be a good-size crowd once the word got out about my hanging," President Bush told some 500 people who attended today's private ceremony to unveil his and his wife Laura's portraits, which will go on public view tomorrow in the permanent "American Presidents" display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, Washington.

Not only was he hung but first he got framed.

You can read more in Christine Simmons' Associated Press report.

The NPG jumped the gun a bit in memorializing a President a month before he leaves office. According to the museum's announcement:

This is the first time that the Portrait Gallery will present the official likenesses of a sitting [as opposed to departed] president and first lady.

We note with approval that the President chose to be depicted as an open-collar kind of guy. Thomas Campbell, do you copy?

Oh, and here's the iridescent Laura:


Aleksander Titovets' portrait of Laura Bush, National Portrait Gallery

The opinions of distinguished art critics are neither sought nor desired. But just think: If Hillary had been elected, she wouldn't have had to sit for another portrait. Her 2006 likeness (which I liked when I saw it that summer) was the NPG's first commissioned portrait of a First Lady:


Ginny Stanford's portrait of Hillary Clinton, National Portrait Gallery

Watch Out for Those Claws!
Michael Govan behind the LACMA Lobster at the opening of Broad Contemporary Art Museum

As I mentioned in my previous post, Michael Govan, CEO and director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, wants to emphasize that merger talks between his institution and the financially moribund LA MOCA occurred because "MOCA came to us."

Trying to counter suggestions that he was nefariously plotting to annex the cash-poor, art-rich contemporary museum, Govan told me:

When times got tough and they wanted options to think about, we offered to craft what we thought was an exciting option: You'd join the boards in a complete partnership and you'd share responsibility in this big civic enterprise....

The conversation began with Jeremy [Strick, MOCA's director]. We started talking about the fact that they needed to expand [their space] for the collection. So we discussed 10,000 ideas, including [space in LACMA's buildings on] Wilshire [Avenue], the Broad building, the new building [now being constructed opposite LACMA's new Broad Contemporary Art Museum]. We talked about whether they wanted to do a show of MOCA's collection for a while, to get it out of storage. Merger only came up very late in the game.

But although Govan said he had previously (before merger discussions) offered free use of LACMA's space for displaying MOCA's collection, he wouldn't commit to renewing that offer, should MOCA accept Eli Broad's $30-million bailout.

"You can't pin me down," he told me, "because we don't know the future. It's up to us to make those decisions in a new environment, once we understand what MOCA is."

Regarding the pros and cons of LACMA's and Broad's dueling offers to secure MOCA's future, Govan said this:

Eli Broad has checks to offer. What do we have to offer? We have community spirit, a broad-based board, a good administrative background and a vision for the future. We didn't have millions and millions of dollars to turn over to them. I actually offered something different---a partnership.

That's nice, Michael. But MOCA needs lots of money. Do you think you can come up with the dough?

Yes, but you're also talking to an optimist who is in the midst of developing philanthropy in Los Angeles. I think we're on an upcurve and I think we're proving it. Over two years we're raising a lot of money and it's coming from young people, so I feel confident and I have reason to feel confident.

Sounds to me like a contest between Govan's optimistic vision vs. Broad's bucks-in-the-bank. Although I have deep respect for Govan's contemporary art creds and his deftness and effectiveness as an administrator, I still feel that putting a feisty, provocative contemporary art museum under the management of a conventional encyclopedic museum (okay, maybe a bit less conventional under Govan) is a MOCA-choker. And the next director, whenever he or she may succeed Michael, may not be as attuned to contemporary art imperatives as the founding director of Dia Beacon.

Govan argues otherwise:

Everybody said, "Merger is death." It's not death. It could be life, in a certain context. We love artists and we love MOCA. It's not to swallow them up. It would be strategic suicide to swallow them up.

Michael Govan, CEO and director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, who has taken a lot of heat for his rescue plan that others (including me) have criticized as an inappropriate takeover bid, called me yesterday to explain his side of things.

In a wide-ranging interview, he emphasized that MOCA had approached him for a proposal, not the other way around. He added that he had known full well that offering a rescue plan would cause him to be "heaped with criticism for a takeover mentality" but he was "happy to take some hits if if MOCA comes out of this well."

An institution like LACMA, he asserted, could not have fallen into the financial hole that MOCA is now struggling to emerge from, because "our fiscal controls are way too tight. Here it's brutal. We run a tight ship, so that would never happen in a place like this."

I'll have more from our discussion later. From today's news coverage, it appears that the fate of MOCA's director, Jeremy Strick, and of the dueling rescue plans presented by Govan and Eli Broad are still in the balance.

UPDATE: Read more from my interview with Michael Govan here.

This hit my inbox at 4:40 p.m., Los Angeles time, from a press spokesperson for LA MOCA:

The Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees is continuing to review the options presented to the full board today. MOCA anticipates making a further announcement as early as next week regarding the outcome of these discussions.

I guess they may not be interested in waiting to hear from Mayor Villaraigosa's expert panel.

I'll update here if I learn anything more.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

Should a city's mayor assemble a panel to help determine a privately run museum's future?

LA's Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa thinks so.

In a letter sent today to the co-chairmen of LA MOCA's embattled board, the major called for a 30-day delay in deciding what to do about the two rescue options offered by Eli Broad and by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In the meantime, he want's MOCA's board members to engage in "a public review of the proposals before them, allowing for input from the community and all interested stakeholders." This public review would be "conducted by or in conjunction with a panel of appointed contemporary arts experts," to be convened by the major.

I always thought that MOCA had superlative contemporary art experts already on hand. It's the fiscal and fundraising experts who were conspicuously missing.

In what sounds like a swipe at the proposed LACMA merger, Villaraigosa also wrote:

Any plan to preserve the museum's long term financial health must also maintain MOCA's independence and require structural reform and strict financial accountability measures. The strategic choices you make for MOCA's future should...ensure that the Board maintains its stewardship and authority over the financial and operational management of the museum.

Eli Broad was invited to discuss his bailout proposal at today's MOCA board meeting. In light of the mayor's surprise intervention, I doubt we'll have any decision today regarding the two offers on the table. But there should be no delay in addressing two of the mayor's expressed concerns---"structural reform and strict financial accountability measures."

In his memo to the J. Paul Getty Trust's staff, informing them that financial shortfalls will necessitate a job freeze and other cost reductions, Getty president James Wood revealed:

Our endowment ended the 2008 fiscal year [ending June 30] at $5.98 billion and, since that time, with financial markets deteriorating further, the value of the endowment has declined roughly 25%.

That's not the half of it.

The Getty's latest round of cost reductions follows last May's announcement that 114 Getty positions would be eliminated. The trust's endowment is now (December 2008) down 30% from its $6.4-billion total at the end of fiscal 2007, when there was a $49.36-million operating deficit on a budget of $307.7 million. Net assets were down from $8.88 billion at the end of fiscal 2007 to $8.43 billion at the end of fiscal 2008.

What's more, according to the Getty's audited financial statements, total revenues, support and investment income, which amounted to $1.16 billion in fiscal 2007, showed a LOSS of $150.02 million in fiscal 2008.

It's all about the investments:

Net investment losses totaled $139.54 million, compared to a GAIN of $1.14 BILLION in 2007 Although Wood assured staffers, in a recent memo, that "the Getty's endowment is managed prudently, with careful oversight," the financial statements show that the lion's share of the Getty's fortune---a whopping $3.71 billion of the $5.98 billion it had invested as of June 30---was allocated to "alternative investments." Here's what the financial statements have to say about that:

To increase expected returns and provide further diversification to the investment portfolio, the Trust has been increasing its allocation to alternative investments where no readily determinable market value exists. A significant portion of the Trust's alternative investments is made up of limited partnerships, which include private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, distressed debt and real assets.

It should be noted that the Getty is among many distinguished nonprofit institutions that were attracted by the allure of hoped-for higher returns from alternative investments that have now proven dicey, if not disastrous.

Other revelations from the 2008 financials:

The Getty spent some $81.35 million on acquisitions, compared to $27.27 million the previous year. Proceeds of sales from the collection totaled $66,000 in 2008; $3.39 million in 2007.

The Trust still persists in capitalizing its collections---a practice frowned upon by most major art museums, which do not regard permanent collections as financial assets and don't assign values to them on their balance sheets. The Getty valued its collection at $1.87 billion in 2008; $1.79 billion in 2007.

What I don't know yet is the amount of the Getty's operating deficit on its $339-million budget for fiscal 2008. This figure cannot be determined from the online statement of activities, because (unlike the statement of activities on p. 76 of the trust's 2007 annual report, which reported that year's $49.36-million deficit) the 2008 online financials omit both the amount of the deficit and amount of endowment money that was used to fund operations. The 2008 annual report is not yet online.

I am awaiting an answer from the Getty to my query about the amount of the deficit. I'll update if and when I have that information.

Museum of Arts and Design's Wharton Esherick cherrywood low table, 1960, sold yesterday for $24,000 (with buyer's premium)

As we continue our cranky coverage of Deaccession December, let us not forget the disposals at Bonham's by the newly relocated and reopened Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Although Bonham's press release had announced that the sale was scheduled for Dec. 10, it actually took place yesterday, a week later. (Very tricky!)

Only 24 of the 44 MAD offerings found buyers, with a total hammer price of $54,325 against a $100,500-$147,600 presale estimate. The Wharton Esherick table above was MAD's top lot, with a hammer price of $20,000 (presale estimate: $20,000-30,000). But the Wendall Castle plantain coffee table, 1984, estimated at $8,000-12,000 and pictured at the top of the above-linked press release, went unsold. MAD says that proceeds will go towards acquisitions.

All praise to Bonham's for its online results list, which, with the click of a drop-down menu, allows you to see prices with or without buyer's premium, allowing you easily to make apples-to-apples comparisons of hammer prices with the presale estimates of hammer prices.

If Bonham's can do this on its low-tech website, surely Sotheby's and Christie's can too.

It's more than just a bake sale.

Some 3,200 MOCA-philes have signed a petition against the proposed merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The petition has been delivered by the grassroots group, MOCA Mobilization, to MOCA's board. This is the same group that held a rally at the museum's Geffen Contemporary building on Nov. 23, which was attended by prominent LA artists, as well as Paul Schimmel, MOCA's chief curator.

The museum's board meets again later today to ponder possible solutions to the institution's crisis of cash flow and confidence.

Here is the statement delivered to the board by MOCA Mobilization:

We support an independent and autonomous MOCA. We condemn any plan now or in the future to merge MOCA with any other institution. MOCA's artistic integrity and vitality, acknowledged locally and globally, can only be served by its existence as an independent museum, and not as a department or program at LACMA, whose mission as an encyclopedic museum must appropriately frame its numerous programs.

LACMA's press release of Dec. 16 states: "The goal of this plan would be to preserve the independence and integrity of both institutions while combining their operations and infrastructure." This is not a definition of "independence" that we accept.

We at MOCA Mobilization want the reality of independence---not the appearance of it. We demand that the MOCA Board of Trustees honor MOCA's local and international leadership in contemporary art by maintaining the museum's autonomy.

Michael Govan

[Michael Govan gives CultureGrrl his side of the story here.]

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art calls its proposal for rescuing the financially moribund MOCA a "merger" and "partnership."

It's more like a takeover bid, and not a particularly friendly one.

MOCA's crisis received its first public airing almost a month ago, but LACMA dropped its bomb into yesterday's meeting of MOCA's board, where it was to decide on the contemporary museum's future course. Although previous discussions had occurred, his was the first time that the board had been presented with a formal proposal, as LACMA's spokesperson, Barbara Pflaumer, yesterday confirmed to me.

While the board was still deliberating, LACMA alerted the media to publicize its offer, wresting control of the story from MOCA, just as it will soon wrest control of the dynamic, feisty but fiscally fizzled institution itself, if Govan has his way.

This takeover should not be allowed to happen.

You need only compare the agility, acuity and even prescience of institutions devoted solely to contemporary art (MOCA, above all) with the conservative me-tooism in the contemporary galleries of large encyclopedic museums to know that a merger would not just pose pitfalls; it would be the abyss.

Instead of being a perpetrator of pernicious takeover mischief, Michael Govan should have been a collaborative colleague, offering to provide space and support for MOCA's insufficiently exhibited, superb permanent collection, without insisting on assuming control over it (as would happen under a single-board, single-director merger).

This cooperative relationship could have been a win-win: MOCA could have been relieved of storage and conservation costs and would have benefited from major-museum exposure; LACMA would have gotten display rights over a world-class contemporary collection---something that, for all its grand new and planned new spaces, it conspicuously lacks.

Speaking of mischief, Jeremy Strick, director of MOCA, did a very mischievous thing when artworld luminaries were assembled in town last February for the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA (which I covered for the Wall Street Journal). Not only was the fabulous Murakami show in residence at the Geffen Contemporary, but the highlights of MOCA's permanent collection emerged from storage for a beautifully installed, brilliantly elucidated (with lots of comments by the artists on the labels) contemporary survey show at MOCA's Grand Avenue building.

For those of us who made it to MOCA's press showings, the contrast between the sedate, sometimes stultifying BCAM display and the engaging, engrossing MOCA enterprise was impossible to miss.

Still, when I sat next to him at MOCA's press lunch, Strick tipped his hat to his counterpart at LACMA:

Michael has raised the bar for philanthropy in the arts in a way that's been beneficial to all of us.

Not beneficial enough, apparently. And now MIchael has cornered some philanthropists who are willing to contribute to MOCA, but only under Govan governance: Pflaumer told me that her institution has donors already committed to supporting the proposed LACMA-MOCA, "but we are not at liberty to go into detail at this juncture." These unnamed angels should deal directly with an independent MOCA, instead of backing a takeover.

MOCA's board, meeting again tomorrow, is between a rock (Govan) and a hard place (Eli Broad). According to Edward Wyatt's report in today's NY Times, "some museum board members have grown wary of Mr. Broad's offer in recent days as he has outlined its conditions, some of which, opponents say, put him in the position to control the museum or its collections if the museum is not able to complete its fundraising efforts."

Wyatt also indicated that Strick's departure, which many (but not CultureGrrl) have called for, may be almost a done deal:

Jeremy Strick...is negotiating the terms of his resignation with members of the board of directors, two people close to the board said on Tuesday.

And in other MOCA rescue news, an updated article on the LACMA proposal by Diane Haithman and Mike Boehm reports the following:

Aiming to discourage the [LACMA-MOCA] merger, [City Council President Eric] Garcetti and Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district includes MOCA's downtown venues, introduced a council motion Tuesday asking the city Community Redevelopment Agency to give MOCA $2.8 million in rent money derived from the neighboring California Plaza development.

The council members are particularly focused on the important role of MOCA's Grand Avenue headquarters as a linchpin in downtown redevelopment efforts---something that Broad too has stressed. What the LA Times didn't say, but the council members did (on KCRW's The Politics of Culture radio program yesterday) is that their proposal is predicated on MOCA's installing new leadership, accepting Eli Broad's offer and renewing its commitment to remain in downtown Los Angeles.

UPDATE: I just received a copy of the LA Council motion. Although Perry specifically mentioned on the radio that MOCA's acceptance of Broad's offer was one of the conditions for municipal support, the language actual introduced says that MOCA must accept "offers of financial assistance from private individuals to increase its sustainability."

Barbara Pflaumer, press spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has responded by e-mail to my queries about LACMA-MOCA.

Here are my Q's and her A's, in full:

Q: Does LACMA's proposal to MOCA involves a single board and a single director? If yes, does that mean the departure of [current MOCA director] Jeremy Strick?

A: Combined board for the two museums with a strong professional and curatorial figure/art leader who would lead MOCA. [CultureGrrl comments: "Art Leader" is not the same thing as "Director." The Strick question was conspicuously ignored in the answer. Michael Govan, LACMA's director, is above all a contemporary art specialist. It would appear that he wants to run this show. My guess is that MOCA's chief curator, Paul Schimmel, could be the unnamed "strong curatorial figure."]

Q: Where would the money come from to rescue MOCA under your plan?

A: Raised by private supporters

Q: Does LACMA have donors already committed for the LACMA-MOCA partnership?

A: Yes, but we are not at liberty to go into detail at this juncture

Q: Is Eli Broad still on board with the $30-million offer, if the partnership is consummated?

A: Ask MOCA. [Actually, I've asked Broad, through his spokesperson. No response yet.]

Q: Are there any other details that you can share with me on the proposed arrangement?

A: No.

Q: Was your formal proposal presented to MOCA's board for the first time at today's board meeting?

A: Yes.

Q: Is the proposal still under consideration, to be discussed by MOCA's board on Thursday?

A: Yes.

UPDATE: Michael Govan talks to Diane Haithman of the LA Times here. This piece makes it appear that a LACMA-MOCA merger would be an alternative to the Broad offer, not a beneficiary of it. Indeed, Broad made it clear, in a statement his office sent to me today, that he wants MOCA to remain "headquartered on Grand Avenue." Govan seems to suggest that the Grand Avenue space might be secondary to the Geffen Contemporary under his auspices.

More on MOCA's financial crisis here, here and here.

You thought you might know today how MOCA's board will address the museum's dire financial crisis?

Think again.

This just in from the MOCA board:

In light of ongoing discussions with potential partners, the MOCA Board of Trustees convened today and will meet again on Thursday, Dec. 18.

We are grateful for the generosity of the Broad Foundation and the interest and efforts of LACMA leadership. The MOCA Board of Trustees is considering options that are best for the museum's long term health, including its permanent collection and its exhibition and education programs. We recognize MOCA's importance to the city of Los Angeles and the art world.

The suspense continues.

In a surprising (to say the least) development, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has posted on its website some general information about its proposed partnership with MOCA, which is still being pondered, as I write this, at a closed meeting of MOCA's board.

What I like about the proposal is the plan to allocate space for MOCA's important but insufficiently displayed permanent collection in LACMA's Broad Contemporary Art Museum and in its Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion, now under construction. (I've previously endorsed such an arrangement here.)

The rest, to me, is very murky. You can read the above-linked press release for yourself, to see if it's clearer to you than it is to me whether MOCA will retain its separate director and whether the two boards will become one. (Does the "strong director and management team already in place" refer to the team at MOCA or at LACMA?)

Unless MOCA remains under its own (but much improved) governance, the notion that LACMA's plan will "preserve the independence and integrity" of MOCA is a myth. The official dissemination of his offer while MOCA's board is still closeted may be LACMA director Michael Govan's idea of transparency, but it also strikes me as a lack of diplomacy. It seems almost calculated to embarrass MOCA's board if it has the chutzpah to turn down an offer that Govan thinks it shouldn't refuse.

The missing piece is: Who's going to show MOCA the money? Is Eli Broad still on board? When I know more, you'll know more.

Charles James, "Dress, Evening," 1952, Silk. Gift of Mrs. R. A. Bernatschke, Brooklyn Museum

Another financially pressed institution might say that a long-held collection, which it could not properly conserve or display, fell outside its present mission and should be sold to benefit other acquisitions.

Would the Brooklyn Museum do this? Fuhgeddaboudit!

(I know, I know. That's a Brooklyn cliché, but those of us with classy Bronx accents have to affect superiority.)

Under the terms of a win-win arrangement (reported by Carol Vogel in today's NY Times), Brooklyn next month will transfer its important costume collection to the Metropolitan Museum, in a partnership benefiting both institutions and creating a combined collection of some 54,500 costumes and accessories (23,500 of those from Brooklyn). Simultaneous exhibitions drawn from Brooklyn's trove will be mounted in 2010 at both museums.

(Yes, of course. Carol received the story first: The press release from Brooklyn hit my inbox at 9:15 this morning, so that I could play my favorite game, "Times Catch-Up.")

According to Brooklyn's press release, the transferred items "will be known as the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Works from the collection will be fully integrated into the [Met] Costume Institute's program of exhibitions, publications, and education initiatives."

Brooklyn's director, Arnold Lehman, predicted that the arrangement "will create a model for similar museum partnerships both nationally and internationally."

Cookies to the Rescue!

What did we mommies do when we wanted to show support for our children's school?

We held a bake sale! (Baking's not one of my talents. I brought the soda.)

So some inspired wags have timed a bit of pastry patronage to take place outside the financially starved LA MOCA right before today's crucial board meeting that may determine its fate. Trustees may want to pick up some sweet sustenance on the way to their conclave. The price: $1 million per item.

Christopher Knight of the LA Times has the skinny, as well as photos of these delicacies, mouthwateringly arrayed in the newspaper's Culture Monster blog:

In addition to the Giacometti-style baguettes...there will be cakes adorned with images by Jasper Johns and Judy Fiskin, Vija Celmins "Night Sky" brownies and iced graham crackers derived from works by Lawrence Weiner and Christopher Wool.

Let's hope the trustees' solution to their institution's crisis isn't half-baked: Mike Boehm reported yesterday on Culture Monster that two trustees---co-chairman Tom Unterman and longtime member Jane Nathanson---have indicated that while deaccessioning is not their preferred option, they haven't ruled it out.

Richard Caton Woodville, "War News from Mexico," 1848

A comment appended yesterday to LA Times art critic Christopher Knight's recent Culture Monster blog post on the National Academy deaccessions mentions that this month's disposals by the Academy weren't its first. But it doesn't identify the previously sold paintings.

I know about (but have not yet written about) the most recent prior disposal: The Academy's director, Carmine Branagan, had mentioned it to me when I interviewed her in her office. David Dearinger, chief curator of the National Academy Museum from 1996 to 2004, provided additional details.

It's Richard Caton Woodville's "War News from Mexico," above, which Dearinger believes was sold in the early 1990s to put the Academy "on a solid financial footing." He said it was "bought by [major American art collector] Richard Manoogian and is on long-term loan at the National Gallery." (I have queries in with both the Academy and National Gallery to confirm the details, and will update if I receive further information.)

The National Academy's artist-board must believe that if at first you don't succeed in putting yourself on a firm financial footing by selling one important painting, try, try again.

Here's a link to a blog called "Updates, Live," showing the painting installed at the National Gallery. Below is a photo of it (on right) at a 1968 Brooklyn Museum exhibition devoted to the artist:

It's official: The NY State Board of Regents' Cultural Education Committee this afternoon voted in favor of revised rules (described here), which would prohibit most museums and historical societies in the state from using deaccession proceeds to defray debts, operating expenses, and most capital expenses. The proposed revisions will go before the full board at its meeting tomorrow. [UPDATE: James Dawson, chairman of  the committee, told me that the committee's vote was unanimous and that tomorrow's approval by the full board is a certainty.]

This reverses the original proposed amendment, which would have allowed such proceeds to be used to satisfy debts. This was to be considered as a last resort, to forestall bankruptcy proceedings that could result in liquidation of collections.

In fact, even the most financially desperate institutions do have other assets besides collections that, in worst-case scenarios, could be exploited before collections are touched---endowment funds and real estate, for example. Rather than liquidating collections, failed institutions should, if possible, transfer objects held in the public trust to other public institutions.

We hope, even in these challenging times, it never comes to that.

Speaking of which, the board of LA MOCA meets tomorrow to discuss how to address that institution's financial and administrative crisis. Selling works from the collection is one of several ideas that have reportedly been proposed.

In light of unequivocably strong statements deploring the recent National Academy sales by both the Association of Art Museum Directors and the American Association of Museums, selling art to address operating deficits should be a non-starter. Excommunication by its professional peers could only exacerbate MOCA's woes.

Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums

A forcefully worded letter sent Friday by Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums, to the NY State Board of Regents may well have been crucial in turning the tide against the Regents' now aborted proposal to allow museums and historical societies to sell collection objects to defray debts. (Christine Anagnos, deputy director of the Association of Art Museum Directors, whom I contacted for a copy of any letter that group may have sent, informed me: "AAMD has not released a statement.")

Below are excerpts from Bell's ringing manifesto:

It is precisely because we are in difficult times that we must keep our professional ethics about us, for it is by sticking to our ethics when times are bad as well as good that we earn the public trust. This is particularly true when the subject is museum collections....With a private collection, you may be able to see it today, but you have no assurance that you will see it tomorrow. With a museum, you have the assurance that its collection will be available to the community for generations to come....

An analogy we use is that allowing a museum to trade its collection to cover operating debts would be like allowing a financial fiduciary, such as a bank, to raid assets it holds in a trust to cover a hole in its own balance sheet. This would be inconceivable. It should be equally inconceivable for a museum to raid the assets placed in trust with it....

Any New York museum accredited by AAM which avails itself of this emergency provision [allowing deaccessions to pay debts], should it be adopted, would face immediate review of its Accredited status and probable loss of Accreditation.

"You helped focus everyone in the field on this," Dewey Blanton, head of media relations for the American Association of Museums, told me this morning about the decision of the NY State Board of Regent's Cultural Education Committee to withdraw its Emergency Amendment that would have allowed museums and historical societies to sell objects from their collections "for purposes of obtaining funds to pay outstanding debt."

Blanton credited my emergency post last week about this amendment with helping to spur AAM (which sent its comments to the Regents on Friday) and other concerned members of the museum community to send statements objecting to the state government's proposed validation of desperation deaccessions.

The newly revised language of an amendment to Regents' "Rule 3.27 Relating to Museum Collections Management Policies," which David Palmquist, head of museum chartering for the NY State Board of Regents, forwarded to Blanton in a new draft dated today, states the following:

In no event [emphasis added] shall proceeds derived from the deaccessioning of any property from the collection be used for operating expenses, for the payment of outstanding debt [emphasis added], or for capital expenses other than such expenses incurred to preserve, protect or care for an historic building which has been designated part of its collections.

[You can find the new draft of the amendment by going here, and scrolling way down, past the language of the original amendment, to the section titled, "AMENDMENT OF THE RULES OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS."]

What's more, the new proposed guidelines (to be considered by the Cultural Education Committee this afternoon) are now even MORE stringent than the deaccession guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors. AAMD lists criteria that "might be contemplated" by museums considering disposals. Its deaccession suggestions are not mandatory, a loophole that I have previously criticized.

The Regents' revised proposed guidelines, to be considered at today's meeting of the Cultural Education Commitee, are more forceful. They state that "an institution may deaccession an item or material in its collection ONLY [emphasis added] where one or more" of the following criteria are met: The item is not relevant to the institution's mission; it no longer "retain[s] its identity" (presumably because of condition problems); it is lost or stolen; it is a duplicate not needed for research or educational purposes; the institution lacks the ability to conserve it.

Palmquist told me that he had received "a ton of comments" about the now aborted emergency amendment. Aside from the concerns of museum professionals, there's another reason why the change is no longer on the table: As Palmquist himself had indicated to me on Thursday (before the language was redrafted), the "emergency" that prompted the amendment no longer exists. The original draft was designed with the serious financial difficulties of Fort Ticonderoga in mind.

As Richard Richtmyer of the Associated Press reported yesterday:

Fort Ticonderoga last summer said it wanted to sell some of its works -- including a painting by Thomas Cole thought to be worth millions---to help erase about $2.5 million in debt.

The decision by James Dawson, chairman of the Regents' Cultural Education Committee, to withdraw the original amendment stemmed partly from Fort Ticonderoga's recent fundraising success. "Since the emergency has been removed, we don't need to do it," Dawson told the AP.

Nevertheless, the Regents may soon revisit this issue. Dawson told Richtmyer:

In the fiscal climate the country and the state we are in right now, we can see additional cultural institutions coming into fiscal crisis, We need to have a procedure for dealing with that.

Renderings of the new Tyler School of Art

You can hear me now, in a brief soundbite about the new Wolgin Prize in the Arts, to be awarded by Temple University's Tyler School of Art, which is moving next month to new digs (above) designed by Houston architect Carlos Jimenez:

This is a prize with lots of money, but (as of today) no director, nominators or jurors. We are promised that the nominators will be "an international panel of fine arts leaders."

Will an artist of international stature be interested in a $150,000 award that carries with it a show at this country's 14th-ranked art school (according to U.S. News & World Reports)?

The Hugo Boss at the Guggenheim, the Turner at the Tate...and now the Wolgin at the Tyler?

This could be one of those prizes that confer more benefits on the giver than the recipient. The university's press materials quote real estate developer Jack Wolgin saying that a prize like his "attract[s] a lot of attention" and is "an economic engine...There are some great economic benefits for the city....My goal is for the prize to be an incentive for good work."

As I've stated previously, the kind of artist's award I'd like to see, which could offer a more powerful "incentive for good work," is the restoration of National Endowment for the Arts' fellowships, which used to provide validation and financial benefits to artists at a time in their careers when they really needed this kind of support.

Given the intense interest in this topic, I'm going to print in full the letter sent today by Carmine Branagan, director of the embattled National Academy, to museum directors who are members of the Association of Art Museum Directors, in which she asks AAMD to "rescind its public censure" and reconsider its deaccession rules. I should note that the views of the letter writer do not represent the views of this blogger. But I believe that the National Academy's arguments deserve a fair airing:

December 11, 2008

Dear Museum Director,

I am writing to directly address the reasons for the National Academy of Design's decision to deaccession, and to strongly express our concern about the AAMD's practice of publicly censuring organizations in crisis.

Some time ago it became clear that the National Academy was in dire financial straits and would not survive unless bold steps were taken. The decision to deaccession was reached only after all other options, including efforts to launch a fund raising campaign and to sell the Academy's home on upper Fifth Avenue, were exhausted. There is no question that without deaccessioning, one of the oldest arts institutions in New York City, one that has played a vital role in America's cultural landscape for 183 years, would have had to close its doors forever. It is unthinkable this is what the AAMD intended!

To sell four pieces was a protracted and carefully considered decision that the Academy's membership voted overwhelmingly (181 in favor, one against, one abstention) to support. This decision was reached in conjunction with a long-range financial and programmatic plan that places the Academy's historic collection of American art at its center. A large portion of the Academy's permanent collection has not been available to the public, and now the Academy will have the funds to put this culturally and historically significant collection on regular exhibition, to implement public programs and to continue investing in infrastructure that supports these efforts.

The Academy's governing body and staff undertook an analysis of internal operations and governance from top to bottom. We are all inspired by the new possibilities and are committed make the significant changes required to create an effective governing structure that will sustain the Academy into the future.

Without reservation, we are assuring the museum community that the National Academy will uphold the highest professional standards in all aspects of the exhibition, preservation and interpretation of its collection. The Academy also adheres to the strictest guidelines in the care of any work of art loaned to the institution for exhibition. The Academy's reputation in this regard is flawless. We will continue to strive only to the highest standards.

We sold paintings that had not regularly been in the public domain in order to achieve exactly what the AAMD states is the role of a museum: "to enhance the conservation, exhibition and study of the collection which we recognize is the essence of a museum's service to its community and to the public." Two paintings have been sold (Frederic Edwin Church, "Scene on the Magdalene" and Sanford Robinson Gifford, "Mt. Mansfield, Vermont") and possibly two more will be sold (John White Alexander, "Portrait of Mrs. Hastings" and Robert Blum, "Japanese Beggars") in order to save over 7,300 and to ensure the future of the Academy itself.

It is also important to note that the two paintings that have sold went to a private foundation that regularly places works on public view. The Academy clearly and proactively articulated to the AAM and to the AAMD, in advance of the sale, the reality of its financial situation. We also made clear that the Academy is not an acquiring institution and presented detailed plans to use the proceeds of the sale to make the collection available in a manner that has never before been possible. Based on their criteria for deaccessioning we concluded we had no choice but to withdraw from their accreditation programs.

Without question, the guidelines of both the AAM and the AAMD are important and contribute to the well-being of cultural institutions. However, we believe that the AAMD's action to censure the National Academy so aggressively, while offering no constructive alternative or flexibility, has only harmful and negative results.

We live in a world of unintended consequences, but there is only one outcome of the AAMD's unrelenting and punitive position of public censure: making it significantly more difficult for the Academy to recover and to survive. Is there truly no better way? Being denied the opportunity to borrow works of art will be devastating to the Academy.

With this letter, we are asking the AAMD to rescind its public censure of the National Academy and to reconsider the narrowly focused and inflexible rules that place the very institutions they value at serious risk. I would welcome further discussion with you regarding any of these matters.

This is an issue on which the AAMD, AAM and museums in New York State will surely want to take IMMEDIATE action, by e-mailing comments to David Palmquist, head of museum chartering for the NY State Board of Regents. (He will forward comments to the board):

The NY State Board of Regents is primed to take action this Monday and Tuesday to approve an Emergency Amendment Relating to Museum Collections Management Policies. (To read it, go here, click on "Cultural Education," and then click on the third item, which is the "Emergency Amendment.")  

In the words of the proposed amendment, a state-chartered nonprofit museum or historical society (and most such institutions in the state are required to be chartered) would be permitted, "with the approval of the Board of Regents, to sell or transfer items or material in its collections to another museum or historical society for purposes of obtaining funds to pay outstanding debt, and thereby provide an alternative to the institution's bankruptcy or dissolution, and the possible loss or liquidation of a collection because of debt."

This runs directly counter to the American Association of Museums' deaccessioning guidelines, which are embodied in the state's current rules (scroll down to: 6---Collections Care and Management, e, vi---Deaccessions):

Proceeds derived from the deaccessioning of any property from the institution's collection...[may] be used only for the acquisition, preservation, protection or care of collections. In no event shall proceeds derived from the deaccessioning of any property from the collection be used for operating expenses or for any purposes other than the acquisition, preservation, protection or care of collections.

Palmquist told me that he has heard of some 10-25 institutions that are considering desperation-deaccessions because of pressing financial circumstances. He feels that in situations where an institution might be forced to declare bankruptcy and liquidate its entire collection, limited deaccessioning is the lesser of evils.

At its meeting in Albany this Monday, the Cultural Education Committee of the NY State Board of Regents, which oversees chartered museums and historical societies in the state, will consider the proposed desperation-deaccession amendment. The full Board of Regents is expected to vote on it Tuesday. If approved, the amendment will become effective Dec. 19 and remain in effect for 90 days. The amendment is then expected to be presented to the board for adoption as a permanent rule, at its March meeting.

Museums had very little notice that this change was contemplated: Palmquist first notified chartered museums and historical societies about the amendment in an e-mail sent yesterday. A statement (linked at the top) by the State Education Department about the proposed changes is dated Dec. 1.

Palmquist told me that the National Academy, which has just secretly deaccessioned two important paintings, is not subject to the Regents' oversight and deaccessioning guidelines, having received its charter directly from the state legislature in 1858. The Regents did not receive their power to charter until 1890.

Palmquist said that discussions began yesterday about the need to "rationalize the system," so that its deaccession guidelines would apply to all nonprofit museums and historical societies, whether or not they were originally chartered by the Regents. Those discussions, he said, were initiated in direct response to the National Academy disposals.

The Cultural Education Committee's discussion on the amendment (open to the public but not to public comment) will be held Monday, 2:45-4:15 p.m., in Room 146 of the Education Building, 89 Washington Ave., Albany. The meeting of the full Board of Regents on Tuesday (where the vote on the amendment will be taken) will be on the 5th floor of the same building.

UPDATED here.

Jack Wolgin

I got a heads-up yesterday from Temple University's Tyler School of Art about today's annnouncement of the astonishing new Jack Wolgin International Competition in the Fine Arts, which will award a whopping $150,000 annual prize to "a professional artist of international stature." The winner's work is to be shown at the art school's new facility on Temple's main campus in Philadelphia. (Tyler moves next month from Elkins Park, a Philadelphia suburb.)

If all goes according to plan, I'll be opining on the radio about this improbable, munificent prize, which trumps even the Japan Art Association's $140,000 Praemium Imperiale. Later this morning, I'll be talking with Alex Schmidt on WHYY, Philadelphia Public Radio (91 FM). I'll post the podcast on CultureGrrl after it becomes available on the station's Arts & Culture website, or you can listen live here, by clicking in the upper lefthand corner.

Wolgin, a Philadelphia real estate developer, says he wants to "make a statement to the world about Philadelphia as a great city for the arts." He's certainly making a statement about trying to attract distinguished artists to show their work at Temple.

Better late than never, the Wall Street Journal's esteemed architecture critic, Ada Louise Huxtable (above), administers a good spanking to the NY Times' Nicolai Ouroussoff, in her much-awaited review today of architect Brad Cloepfil's reclad and reconfigured Museum of Arts and Design.

As you may remember, Ouroussoff in September consigned Cloepfil's just completed MAD to his list of New York buildings that should be "candidates for demolition."

Without naming him, Ada Louise implicitly targeted Ouroussoff in her pointed and perceptive appraisal in today's WSJ of the reclad and reconfigured Edward Durell Stone-designed museum building that she had famously described at the time of its opening in 1964 as "a die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollypops [sic]."

She began today's MAD dash by bashing "the reviews [that] have set some kind of record for irresponsible over-the-top building-bashing." (Ouroussoff's demolition wish surely wins, hands down, for most "over-the-top.") She then debunked others who, to buttress their arguments for preservation, had created "a mythology of [the Stone building's] architectural significance." And finally, she put the wrecking ball to the preservationists' arguments by noting that the façade was "past reasonable preservation or repair" and the building was "in serious disrepair."

As the doyenne of architecture criticism sees it:

Once the original is gone or beyond salvation you are faking it; when it's lost, let it go and move on...This [Cloepfil's makeover] is a thoughtful and skillful, if imperfect conversion.

Its chief imperfection, in Huxtable's view, is the horizontal picture window for the as-yet-unopened restaurant. That expanse of glass was added over the strong opposition of the architect.

You can hear my previous WNYC radio commentary on the building and its contents here. My comments of Sept. 23 were in harmony with Ada Louise's today: The original building was an iconic, even loved, touchstone for New Yorkers (like me) who grew up with it. But it was not a great work of architecture and it's time to let it go. Cloepfil sympathetically acknowledged our nostalgia by preserving the original's shape and color.

The rest is history...as it should be. But Ada Louise's own history is still unfolding: She's just come out with a new book. Tonight she receives the Museum of the City of New York's Louis Auchincloss Prize, for "writers and artists whose work is inspired by and enhances the five boroughs of New York City."

Write on!

Carmine Branagan, named director of National Academy, New York

The National Academy story is playing out in a confrontational manner that I never would have predicted.

I had anticipated that the Association of Art Museum Directors under its new activist president, Michael Conforti, might kick the Academy out of the fold for flouting its professional standards. The inviolable rule of the association is that proceeds from art sales may be used ONLY to help pay for acquisitions, not to pay the bills.

But I had never anticipated that AAMD would enforce its censure by taking the unprecedented, punitive action of instructing its member-institutions to deny the Academy loans of art and collaboration on exhibitions. An e-mail to this effect went out yesterday to the 190 members of AAMD, the nation's premier professional organization for art museums.

I certainly never anticipated that the frail National Academy would decide to do battle with the mighty AAMD. Far from resigning, Carmine Branagan, the interim director of the embattled Academy, has just been promoted to permanent director. This after the Association of Art Museum Directors excommunicated the institution for selling two of its most important artworks to put it on firmer financial footing.

What's more, as of today the National Academy is no longer on the list of accredited members of the American Association of Museums, the nation's leading organization for all museums (not just art museums). The Academy withdrew from membership after AAM issued a statement yesterday criticizing it for violating the association's Code of Ethics. That code stipulates that sale proceeds may be used only for "acquisition or direct care of collections."

Dewey Blanton, AAM's press spokesperson, yesterday told me that the association's Accreditation Commission had planned to review the circumstances surrounding Academy's deaccessions. The Academy's withdrawal preempts that review and the removal of accreditation that it might have engendered.

Branagan today told me that she was about to send a letter to AAMD, arguing in favor of deaccessioning in desperate circumstances. She said that, "from the point of view of institutions around the country that are struggling," the letter would address "how we should be pulling together."

AAMD's speedy action, taken after a unanimous vote by 16 of its 19 trustees, could have the paradoxical effect of hastening the demise of an institution that had sold works in a last-ditch attempt to prevent its demise. The Academy's future exhibitions and programs will be seriously hobbled, as will its ability to raise funds. Instead of deaccession-or-die, it could now be deaccession-AND-die.

I have never credited the deaccession-or-die argument and I still don't. That was Fisk University's justification for its attempt to monetize its Stieglitz Collection. When it was instructed by a judge not only to keep the collection but to get it back up on public view, it somehow managed to raise funds the old-fashioned way, allowing it both to display the collection and to keep the university afloat. I believe that deaccessioning is the easy way out, even more tempting today as museums grapple with Dow-ravaged endowments and distressed donors.

But there has been considerable push-back (including here, here and here) against AAMD's strong action. Branagan surprised me today when I called her (not expecting her to pick up), by saying that she thought that my coverage of this issue could actually serve the worthwhile purpose of "giving us the opportunity to discuss this in a way that could be constructive." She said that she has been "getting calls from many people who are in shock at what they did."

As for those who are in shock at what Branagan did, here's an excerpt from yesterday's AAM statement:

When a museum starts trading its collection for financial gain, rather than for strictly scholarly reasons, it ceases to honor its resolution of permanence and begins to function more as an art or antiques dealer with not-for-profit papers of incorporation than as an institution in service to society for the long term.

Perhaps Branagan should peruse AAM's Finding Calm in Crisis: A Museum Survival Guide.

First page of Peru's complaint against Yale, filed Friday in U.S. District Court (click to enlarge)

Remember when Yale and Peru had supposedly reached an accord, more than a year ago, over artifacts excavated in the early 1900s by Yale scholar Hiram Bingham III?

That was then. Now Peru is suing.

Paul Needham of the Yale Daily News today reports:

The Republic of Peru has quietly filed a lawsuit against Yale, officially turning a nearly century-long dispute over the rightful ownership of Inca artifacts into a legal battle, the News has learned.

Peru's 31-page complaint, accompanied by some 26 exhibits, was lodged in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday by the Washington law firm that has represented Peru since last fall....

Peru now seeks "the immediate return of all such property as well as damages that it has suffered on account of Yale's persistent breach of its obligations and profit at the expense of the people of Peru."

Opponents to the tentative accord had included Eliane Karp-Toledo, the wife of Peru's first indigenous president, who sharply criticized it last February in a NY Times Op-Ed piece, asserting that "Peru's sovereign right to the entire collection is not acknowledged, and it is clear that Yale would keep a significant proportion of the materials."

Yale's general counsel, Dorothy Robinson, told Needham that she still hoped the dispute could be settled amicably.

I think they already tried that. When Robinson made that comment, the university had not yet been served with the papers. Judging from the first page, reproduced along with Needham's article, the arguments are anything but amicable:

Yale is wrongfully, improperly, and fraudulently detaining this property and has refused its return.

David Dearinger, above, chief curator of the National Academy Museum from 1996 to 2004, general editor of its collection catalogue for paintings and sculpture created between 1826 and 1925, and now curator of paintings and sculpture at the Boston Athenaeum, responds to Stealth Deaccessions: National Academy Sells Major Works by Church and Gifford:

The sale by the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts of Frederic Edwin Church's "Scene on the Magdalene" and Sanford R. Gifford's "View of Mt. Mansfield" is a sad event that leaves a major gap in a historic collection.

These two paintings were the stars of the Academy's collection of Hudson River School paintings. Church's "Magdalene" was arguably one of the collection's top 10 in terms of historical significance and aesthetic quality.

In relation to the artists' own careers: "Scene on the Magdalene" can surely be considered one of Church's most important South American paintings; Gifford's "Mt. Mansfield" is a quintessentially "Luminist" work of a popular and typical Hudson River School subject. It was the only painting by Gifford that the Academy owned.

These paintings have been included in almost every major monographic exhibition for Church and Gifford, respectively, and in a number of exhibitions devoted to the Hudson River School. They have been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery, Washington, among other venues, and have been on view scores of times at the Academy itself. They have been part of almost every retrospective collection installation that the Academy has mounted and in many themed exhibitions there, especially in the past 35 years.

The sale also devastates the until now intact collection of almost 100 American and European paintings assembled in the 1850s and 1860s by New Yorker James Augustus Suydam, an artist and patron who bequeathed the works to the Academy at his sudden, early death in 1865. For the past 150 years, Suydam's collection, as preserved by the Academy, has been a rare, unabridged example of taste in mid-19th century America.

Although these two canvases may not have the "iconic" qualities of Asher B. Durand's "Kindred Spirits," their removal from their highly visible place at the Academy and possibly from New York is certainly a blow to the cultural life of the city.

Crystal Bridges construction site as of October 2008

This just in from Sandy Edwards, associate director of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR. Edwards was responding by e-mail to my repeated queries about whether Alice Walton's planned museum was the place where the works sold by the National Academy would eventually be publicly displayed (as per Sotheby's agreement with the private foundation that purchased the Church and Gifford).

Edwards wrote:

We discuss only works of art from our permanent collection which have been made public. I appreciate your understanding.

My best understanding is that if Crystal Bridges and Walton hadn't purchased the paintings, they would likely say so. Then again, no news may be no news: They may have an inviolable policy of not responding to people who want to know what they have.

Why Crystal Bridges persists in this policy of selective disclosure about what it is collecting for the public's benefit is another interesting question. Perhaps it wants to surprise us at the opening, scheduled for 2010. The Church and Gifford would be an unpleasant surprise---an instance of a museum that wants to be welcomed into the community of its peers that has participated in another institution's willingness to violate the ethical guidelines of its peers.

As I previously reported (in an update appended to the post linked at the top of this post), Walton's sometime collection advisor, American art historian John Wilmerding, informed me that he had not heard that the Academy's paintings had been purchased by Walton or Crystal Bridges. He was careful to say "to my knowledge," signifying, perhaps, that he could be out of the loop.

Time (and the as yet unidentified venue for the paintings' public exhibition) will eventually tell.

The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Lobby of LA MOCA, Grand Avenue

The question of what to do about the MOCA mess is addressed in dueling articles by Tim Rutten in Saturday's LA Times and by Roberta Smith in today's NY Times.

Rutten wants director Jeremy Strick's head and recommends throwing out the entire governing board along with him. He wants the city's mayor and city council president, who are ex-officio members of the museum's board of trustees, to see to it that this housecleaning happens. Maybe the city should have sent representatives to board meetings who saw to it that MOCA's frightful fiscal irresponsibility didn't happen in the first place.

Smith started her recommendations with a Beatles-inspired exhortation for MOCA's divided board: "Come together right now." She states the obvious: MOCA's board needs to "draft a rescue plan and see what kind of money they can scrape together." She seems to want the stricken Strick to stay on, adding that he needs "support and input from his museum-director colleagues about ways to restructure his staff." (Restructure his staff? How about his finances?) Her one fresh idea is that the fundraising campaign should be grassroots, emulating Obama's campaign, which "harnessed small donations."

Here's what I think:

I want Jeremy Strick to stay. Unless some gross negligence or malfeasance comes to light, I would hate to see him forced by this financial crisis to leave an institution where he's built such a nationally acclaimed program of cutting-edge exhibitions. But his profligate support of artistic vision obviously needs a reality check. MOCA urgently needs a chief financial officer who sees to it that the museum is well run from a fiscal, as well as curatorial, point of view.

Like this letter writer to the LA Times, I hate seeing the former Temporary Contemporary closed, even temporarily. This cavernous Gehry-renovated former warehouse is what makes MOCA uniquely suited for mounting engrossing, sprawling installations of the latest art. This space is now named for David Geffen, who in 1996 donated $5 million to support the museum's endowment drive. Maybe he can be prevailed upon to ante up again. The Geffen Contemporary's closure, beginning Jan. 6, must not be allowed to become permanent.

I also think that the City of Los Angeles, to the extent possible, should not only provide some administrative oversight, as Rutten suggests, but also some cash for this endangered institution situated on city-owned land. New York City, through its Cultural Institutions Group, provides significant annual operating support to 34 institutions on public land---everything from the Staten Island Botanical Garden to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I agree with Roberta that merging with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is a dangerous notion. But I believe that a good synergy between the two institutions could involve using some of the space in LACMA's new Broad Contemporary Art Museum (to which Eli Broad has said he will NOT donate his collection) for rotating displays from MOCA's superb but under-exhibited permanent collection (which would still remain MOCA's property, not LACMA's).

And what about the Broad Challenge? Despite Eli Broad's protestations to the contrary, it seems clear that MOCA's trustees may be chafing at some strings attached to his $30-million bailout offer (which requires that other donors step up to the plate). It is otherwise incomprehensible that no one from MOCA has yet publicly said anything resembling, "Thanks, Eli, for your remarkably large and timely benefaction."

What we do know is that preconditions to Broad's gift (as suggested in Broad's LA Times Op-Ed piece and confirmed to me by his spokeswoman, Karen Denne) include: not selling art to raise funds; maintaining the museum's two locations (Grand Avenue and Geffen Contemporary); keeping MOCA's independence. Perhaps there are more: Edward Wyatt and Jori Finkel of the NY Times reported that Broad "said privately that he favors a management change, according to people who have been part of the discussions."

The one thing that needs to happen yesterday is Strick's forceful, clear communication to the public of am emerging emergency plan for plugging the gaping holes in MOCA's finances. There can be no meaningful appeal for public support without this.

No one will heap bullion on a sinking ship.

Francis Guy, "Winter Scene in Brooklyn," 1818-20, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art



Francis Guy, "Winter Scene in Brooklyn, ca. 1819-20, Brooklyn Museum

Alice Walton's planned Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has just announced another acquisition---Francis Guy's "Winter Scene in Brooklyn." This one will grace its holiday greeting card.

It is one several paintings by the artist of the view from his second-floor window. The one now owned by Crystal Bridges was publicly displayed in 2006 (then ascribed to "private collection") as part of a focus exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, which installed it with its own Guy of the same streetscape.

According to the Brooklyn Museum's description of that show:

Originally, these two "Winter Scenes" were nearly identical, except for variations in the sky and some of the figural vignettes. In 1881, the Museum's canvas suffered damage from a fire and lost about two feet from its left side. This section is preserved in the other version on view here,...allowing us to appreciate the Museum's original composition.

The New York Public Library had owned yet another of these Brooklyn views, until it sold the painting at Sotheby's in 2005 for $1.02 million, far in excess of its $200,000-300,000 presale estimate:


Francis Guy, "Winter Scene in Brooklyn," ca. 1817-20, sold by the NY Public Library

I wonder if Arkansas' Guy-buy will be in this Grrl's holiday mail. When it comes to Crystal Bridges, I've been more naughty than nice.

Dara Mitchell, Sotheby's executive vice president and head of its American paintings deparment, which brokered the secret sales of the National Academy's Church and Gifford paintings to a private foundation, responds to Stealth Deaccessions: National Academy Sells Major Works by Church and Gifford:

While Church's "Scene on the Magdalene" is an important and rare painting I am surprised to hear it compared to Asher B. Durand's "Kindred Spirits," which is an iconic work of unique stature and arguably one of the most widely known images of American 19th-century art. I think one would be hard pressed to find a knowledgeable scholar, collector or dealer who would not agree that the comparison is a bit of a stretch.

Something very strange has happened.

The NY Times includes articles on its Art & Design webpage going back to Nov. 22, but it has deleted the link to yesterday's story by Randy Kennedy that followed (and referenced) my Friday post about the National Academy's secret art sales. (Kennedy's piece is likewise missing from the Times' general Arts webpage.)

You can still read the Times story by clicking this link, but good luck (as of this writing) trying to find it anywhere on today's (Sunday's) website.

My 15 minutes of online fame have evidently expired. (Or maybe the deletion was a mistake and the story will yet be restored.)

One small step for newspapers, one giant step for the NY Times.

The last time that the Times cited me and my blog (more than two years ago), its online editors refused to link to CultureGrrl, informing me that the Times then linked exclusively to its own web pages, not to external sites.

Today, in Randy Kennedy's catch-up article on the National Academy's secret art sales, I am credited for breaking the story ("Lee Rosenbaum, a blogger at artsjournal.com") on the jump page of the hard copy. (His piece starts on the first page of the Arts section.) In the online version (YES!) there's actually an external link.

But it goes to ArtsJournal's home page, not to my blog, CultureGrrl, (which is unnamed), let alone to the specific post that Kennedy alludes to.

Hey, it's a start. But next time (if there ever is one), I hope they'll name the blog, as well as the blogger!

For those who may have done a web search for me after reading the Times, my other posts on the National Academy's art sales are here and here. (The latter link gets you to important details that Kennedy missed.)

Next week, vows the Grrl, there will be more.

I now have it from two sources who requested anonymity---one of whom is 100% unimpeachable---that Sotheby's brokered the private sale of the National Academy's Frederic Church and Sanford Gifford, and that the following are the two other Academy works whose sale is being considered (assuming that its officials haven't thought better of it, in light of the Association of Art Museum Directors' censure):

---John White Alexander, "Portrait of  Mrs. Thomas Hastings" (wife of the famous architect of the Carrère and Hastings firm that designed the NY Public Library), 1901

---Robert Blum, "Study for a Japanese Beggar," 1891

As for how much the AAMDs' censure may cost the Academy, look no further than the current excellent George Tooker retrospective, with loans from the Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Toledo Museum, Philadelphia Museum, Addison Gallery of American Art and Hirshhorn Museum.

The show was organized in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Columbus Museum, which also loaned works.

AAMD has asked its members to cease loans to and collaborations with the academy.

[More on this story here.]

This statement just in from the Association of Art Museum Directors, regarding the news, first reported by CultureGrrl, that the National Academy Museum had sold two masterworks to fund operations:

Art museums collect works of art for the benefit of present and future generations. The conservation, exhibition, and study of the collection are the heart of a museum's service to its community and to the public.

It is therefore a fundamental professional principle that works can only be deaccessioned to provide funds to acquire works of art and enhance a museum's collection. The Association of Art Museum Directors is deeply concerned to learn that the National Academy Museum has deaccessioned works of art from its collection to pay for operating expenses. Prior to this decision, AAMD contacted the National Academy in the hope that we could offer assistance in investigating alternatives to deaccessioning, and to support the museum in upholding the highest professional standards as it faces current challenges.

The National Academy is now breaching one of the most basic and important of AAMD's principles by treating its collection as a financial asset, rather than the cornerstone of research, exhibition, and public programming, a record of human creativity held in trust for people now and in the future.

In the notification of its decision to AAMD last evening, the National Academy voluntarily withdrew from membership in the organization. It is not, however, membership in AAMD per se, but rather a broader commitment to ethical museum practice that demands adherence to the principles governing deaccessioning. Therefore, we have no choice but to censure the National Academy for this action. Consistent with AAMD's Code of Ethics, we call on our members to suspend any loans of works of art to and any collaborations on exhibitions with the National Academy.

That's right, art-lings. I'm not there again. But neither are a lot of other people. I was just ahead of my time:

In today's Wall Street Journal, Kelly Crow gives a comprehensive bad-news report on the scene at Art Basel Miami, where "crowds and sales have dropped off."

Alexandra Peers and Erica Orden in NY Magazine give us the then-and-now comparison of a hot art fair in a cold economy.

Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz of ABC News low-blow the fair by tenuously connecting it with the criminal investigation of its sponsor, UBS. What we really wonder is what's going to happen to UBS's important contemporary art collection, some of which was displayed at the Museum of Modern Art's 2005 exhibition, Contemporary Voices: Works from the UBS Art Collection. (That show included 40 works promised to MoMA, as well as 30 other works owned by the embattled Swiss bank.)

We know that the NY Times' art writers must be somewhere in Florida, or they wouldn't have let me scoop them on the important National Academy deaccession story. But so far the the Timesters have been too busy partying to file a report.

Just kidding: I'm sure we'll see the definitive Beach wrap this weekend.

Frederic Edwin Church, "Scene on the Magdalene," 1854


Sanford Robinson Gifford, "Mt. Mansfield," 1859

[More developments on this story here and here.]

It's been the subject of rumor among American art dealers and experts but, as far as I know, this news has not yet hit the press: In a troubling development that may become more common in these financially trying times, the National Academy Museum in New York has just sold to a private foundation, through an unnamed dealer, two of its greatest American masterpieces, above, by Frederic Edwin Church and Sanford Robinson Gifford, with proceeds to be applied to programs, operations, fundraising initiatives and gallery improvements.

American art experts I've spoken with have put these disposals (especially the Church) in the same league as the New York Public Library's widely criticized sale of another American masterwork, Asher B. Durand's "Kindred Spirits."

Ethical standards promulgated by the Association of Art Museum Directors stipulate that a museum's art sale proceeds must be used only to purchase other works of art, not to defray other expenses. Without a permanent director since Annette Blaugrund left last December, the Academy is currently a "deferred" member of AAMD.

Its interim director since July, Carmine Branagan, who has worked as an administrator of nonprofits but lacks any art-historical background, told me in an extensive interview in her office yesterday that she intended to send a letter to AAMD next week to inform it about the done deal. Mimi Gaudieri, AAMD's executive director, told me on Wednesday that she had preliminary contact "a couple of months ago" with the Academy about possible sales, but "they weren't able to give specifics." She said she had heard nothing since.

Branagan said that two other works, which she refused to identify, were also being considered for sale. It has not yet been determined, she said, whether these would be sold privately or at auction. The total take from deaccessions was expected to be "around $15 million." Most of that amount, she added, has already been raised from the Church and Gifford.

"We are selling to put the permanent collection on exhibit," Branagan declared, saying that a second-floor gallery would be devoted to that purpose. "We had a choice of selling or becoming part of the dustbin of history," she added. She suggested that the Academy should not be bound by the AAMD's guidelines, because "we are really not a traditional museum and we are not an acquiring museum, so it's difficult to adhere to a standard that's not part of who we are." The Academy acquires art not by purchase but through donations by its artist/members of their own work.

Branagan said that the 183-year-old Academy runs a "chronic operating deficit" (now about $800,000 on a $3-million budget) and its $10-million endowment is restricted to specific purposes and cannot be used for general operating funds.

The two sold paintings, which are still (at this writing) on the Academy's "Permanent Collection" website (here and here), were highlights of its 2006 exhibition, Luminist Horizons: The Art and Collection of James A. Suydam. An artist and member of the Academy, Suydam bequeathed his entire 92-painting collection to the institution in 1865. It was, according to the exhibition's catalogue, "the organization's single most important gift of 19th-century art and one that formed the nucleus of the Academy's outstanding permanent collection."

When I asked Branagan if the Academy had contacted the New York State Attorney General's office about the planned sale, she said that the institution's lawyer had expressed the opinion that such notification was unnecessary. She told me that she did not know the identity of the buyer, but added that the agreement between the purchaser and the dealer, at the Academy's request, stipulated that the paintings were to be hung publicly, probably on long-term loan.

Speculation has centered on the Crystal Bridges Museum being planned by the deep-pocketed Alice Walton, whose advisor for acquisitions has been the National Gallery of Art's chairman, John Wilmerding, a distinguished expert on Luminist painting. Walton famously acquired the Public Library's Durand. I have queries pending with Wilmerding and Crystal Bridges. I'll update if and when I receive a response. [UPDATE BELOW.]

The National Academy is an honorary association of artists (called Academicians) who are responsible for its governance. The artist/members voted 181 to 1 (with one abstention) in favor of selling the works. An alternative that was considered but rejected was selling the Academy's swank Fifth Avenue mansion and moving to less pricey quarters.

I'll have more to say later. I suspect that the AAMD, the American Association of Museums, perhaps the Attorney General's office and definitely other journalists will be heard from.

UPDATE---John Wilmerding responds:

To my knowledge, neither Alice Walton nor Crystal Bridges bought those pictures. I don't know where they've gone.

Country Singer Lee Greenwood, President Bush's recent appointee to the National Council on the Arts

With Hillary named to become Secretary of State and the arts candidate, Bill Richardson, just named as Commerce Secretary, clearly the most important posts left for President-Elect Barack Obama to fill are the chairmanships of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. (Just kidding.)

The incumbents, Dana Gioia (NEA) and Bruce Cole (NEH) have announced (here and here) their intentions to leave their posts at the end of this year. The NEA last month welcomed a maverick council member, appointed to a six-year term by President Bush---country songwriter and singer Lee Greenwood (above), who, as the NEA's press release informs us, is "best known for his anthemic, crossover single 'God Bless the USA,' which received the Country Music Association Song of the Year honor in 1985. A Grammy Award winner and multi-platinum entertainer, Greenwood has charted seven number one country music songs, including 1980's hits 'Somebody's Gonna Love You' and 'Dixie Road.'"

And let us not forget the ever popular "Between a Rock and a Heartache." (No, I am not kidding.)

What would have been his views, we all wonder, on the application for the grant awarded by NEA this year for the Frick Collection's "Masterpieces in Bronze: Riccio, Sculptor of the Paduan Renaissance"?

Let's get back to the chairmen's search. Victoria Hutter, the National Endowment for the Arts' acting director of communications, gave CultureGrrl some useful background on how it will play out:

For the transition team, it's Bill Ivey [Bill Clinton's NEA chairman] as the team leader for the three cultural agencies (NEA, NEH and Institute of Museum and Library Services) and Anne Luzzatto for the NEA itself. [Luzzato was Clinton's special assistant to the President, deputy White House press secretary for the National Security Council, and assistant U.S. trade representative for public affairs.]

Given how these things have rolled out in the past, we don't expect to hear about a new chairman until well after January. That said, it may be different this time.

A third member listed on Obama's NEA/NEH Review Team (scroll down) is Clement Price, history professor at Rutgers University, Newark, and director of its Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience. He also happens to be the husband of Mary Sue Sweeney Price, the director of the Newark Museum. Is there an NEA appointment in her future?

CultureGrrl is a notoriously poor prognosticator of likely candidates for important posts, so let me now give the kiss of death to someone who seems to me a natural to lead the NEA, should she want that job---Mary Schmidt Campbell, dean of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a past leader of government arts agencies in New York City and State. She was also formerly director of the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Just think, if we can just get a visual arts person in there, maybe the arts agency will resume giving fellowships to visual artists. After all, with a literature guy at the top, writers are currently getting preferential treatment.

Albert Bierstadt, "Rocky Mountain Goats," ca. 1885, sold by the Met for $481,000

As I mentioned in passing here, the latest installment of Metropolitan Museum annual reports, always a must-read for museum wonks, is now online.

I've already told you about the operating deficit of $3.22 million for the year ended June 30, compared to the surplus of $2.63 million the previous year.

So what's the Met going to do about it?

The remedies suggested in the annual report, aside from job cuts by attrition, sound like nickel-and-diming:

Some of the potential mitigating actions that may be undertaken to dampen the impact of an economic downturn include evaluating [job] vacancies to determine if any could be eliminated; reviewing the use of temporary agencies and messenger services; evaluating the current use of newspaper and magazine subscriptions; and reviewing the operations of the Image Library, Education, and Editorial areas. There are opportunities for these areas to have enhanced revenue streams that create a business/commercial element while contributing to the fulfillment of the Museum's mission.

While they're searching for cost savings, does the Met really need to maintain a Geneva office, headed by director Philippe de Montebello's longtime associate director for exhibitions, Mahrukh Tarapor?

In all fairness, I should note that in last year's annual report, the chief financial officer, Olena Paslawsky, observed that the 2007 surplus was "largely due to several factors that are not likely to recur, including lower pension expenses resulting from changes in interest rates and gains on invested pension assets."

And that was before the current international financial blow-up.

But enough of finances. Let's move to collections. Some $48.93 million went towards acquisitions in fiscal 2008, compared to $27.49 million the previous year. Proceeds from art insurance and sales of objects totaled $7.03 million ($4.47 million in 2007).

Which brings us to the Objects Sold or Exchanged page, where we learn that in fiscal 2008, the Met disposed of seven works that were each valued at more than $50,000. These included a Bierstadt, above, and several Medieval objects. At this writing, the museum still hasn't gotten around to removing the Bierstadt from its online collection database. That painting was sold at Christies on May 21, 2008 for $481,000 (including buyer's premium)---something of a bargain against its $600,000-800,000 estimate.

Wait a minute! The Getty Museum's officials are known to have a thing about goats. Has anyone checked their collection database lately?

The Euphronios krater in its last days at the Met
 
Yesterday was apparently Tom Campbell's day to be bombarded with advice neither solicited nor desired. It wasn't just my Ten Suggestions, presumptuously instructing the Met's director-elect on how he should run the show. It was also Sharon Waxman's NY Times piece on yesterday's Op-Ed page---How Did That Vase Wind Up in the Metropolitan?, telling him how to address antiquities controversies:

Mr. Campbell is young [a mere lad of 46, from the wizened perspective of Sharon and me], British [they don't have restitution issues, do they?] and gloriously new to all this. Unconnected to the traumas of past restitution battles [hasn't he had some previous connection to the Met?], he may be able to move the museum world forward without also emptying the Met's halls of Greek amphorae, Egyptian sarcophagi or Etruscan chariots. [That chariot ain't goin' nowhere.]

Exactly how he should go about this task, Sharon doesn't say.

As I observed in my mostly admiring appraisal of Waxman's recently published book, Loot, her strong suit is reportage, not analysis. But the Op-Ed game requires some pointed opining, so she goes with what she's got---a strong conviction that the Met must "come clean about its past of appropriation of ancient art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries" by "publicly acknowledging the controversial or otherwise dubious histories of some artifacts and by making the recent past as much a part of the artifacts' stories as the ancient past."

She wants museums' "lies of omission" (which she calls "shameful") to be rectified not only on the museum's website (where they belong), but also right there on the gallery labels, next to the objects themselves. She deplores the fact that the Euphronios krater, until the Met relinquished it last January to Italy, "gave visitors no sign of its disputed status, no indication of the pitched battle that raged around its possession."

When I view ancient objects at museums, I don't want to be constantly reminded of present-day skirmishes. I mostly want to admire them for what they are and to think about the cultures that they came from. I believe that most of us go to museums for what they can tell us about the objects, not for what the objects can tell us about the museums. A litany of mea culpas might satisfy some moral imperative but would interpose constant static on the connection between visitor and object.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Here's hoping that the Metropolitan Museum's new director, Tom Campbell, will hit the ground running when he assumes his prestigious post one month from today. He's been at the institution for 13 years, knows the players, and will have had the benefit of four months of intensive on-site training. There's no reason for him to be tentative or indecisive in approaching the stepped-up challenges of this job in these economically troubled times.

With all due respect to Philippe de Montebello (and tremendous respect IS due), here's what I'd like to see from the Met's new leader. (I touched on some of these points previously here):

---A willingness to speak out forcefully about important hot-button issues affecting the field. For the most part, Philippe made his views about standards and practices known through his actions, not through his words. He hesitated to speak out in ways that might be interpreted as implied criticism of his colleagues, even when correctives were urgently needed. I'm thinking, for example, of other museums' growing exploitation of collections as cash cows---an issue on which he communicated more forcefully in French for Le Monde than on his own turf.

This is the part of the job that I fear Tom Campbell may be least suited for. From what I've seen so far, he lacks the facility of his predecessor as a public speaker. Philippe radiated authority and presence from the moment he occupied the director's office. Campbell seems more diffident (even halting) as a speaker on anything but his scholarly specialty. But part of this may be the awkwardness of his position as director-in-waiting.

---A drive to bring the Met's formidable expertise down to the level of the general public. By this I don't mean dumbing down in the manner of the new installation of 19th- and 20th-century European art. I mean giving the public more chances to meet and hear from the curators themselves. One of the great joys of attending press previews of exhibitions at the Met is the chance to hear the curators themselves expound upon their intentions and achievements. Maybe similar opportunities could be afforded to members of the general public (at low cost or no cost), through a lottery or online sign-up system. The Inside Look lectures should be continued and expanded.

The director, despite the enormous demands on his time, should also find ways to meet and greet the public. Aloofness should give way to more openness. This is the part of the job that I feel Tom Campbell, the popularizer of tapestries, may be best suited to accomplish. He should open that collar, both literally and figuratively.

---A willingness to invite the public behind the scenes. Feed the fascination about how museums work by arranging guided tours of conservation labs, study rooms, storerooms. Mount yearly displays of new acquisitions (supplemented with related works already in the collection), to elucidate how the museum develops its holdings.

---Less fear and loathing of the press. I always had the feeling that Philippe had a love-hate relationship to the press (or was it just to me?). The Met gets a huge volume of press inquiries, ranging from those that are inane and ill-informed to those that deserve serious, responsive handling. Some filtering does have to occur. But the Met press office functions more like that of a big private corporation than that of an institution with a public purpose of scholarship and display. The press should be given easier access to the sources who make the institution what it is---administrators and curators who are the best spokespersons for the institution. For the most part, they are willing and even eager to discuss their work, but are restricted or muzzled by an excessively defensive administrative policy.

---More emphasis on elucidating and supporting the art and artists of our own time. For better or worse, the Met is deeply involved---through its collections and exhibitions---with contemporary art. It ought to approach this field with the same passion for excellence and insight that it brings to the rest of art history. That doesn't mean handing off the responsibilities for contemporary to the same curator who oversees Impressionism (as, in fact, has happened). It probably means raiding a contemporary art museum for someone widely recognized for curatorial acumen in this field (as with the Museum of Modern Art's hiring of LA MOCA's curator, Connie Butler).

---Generosity in sharing the wealth. Get museum-quality works out of the storeroom and into other museums that would love to show them. American museums argue that Italy and other antiquities-rich countries have many more important objects than they can display and that many of those objects should be sent out on long-term loan. The same reasoning should apply to the Met and other object-rich American museums. To be sure, the Met's latest annual report includes a voluminous three-page list of loans. Expand and systematize this, by providing department-by-department clearinghouse lists of objects available to qualified institutional borrowers.

---Collaborative posture towards other New York institutions. Too often, our city's museums are locked in competitive mode. A purely accidental "collaboration" recently occurred between the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library & Museum, which happened to mount Philip Guston displays at the same time. Such commonalities (with cross-references explicitly drawn through labeling and brochures in the institutions' galleries) should be more commonly explored for the public's and the institutions' benefit.

---Encouragement of more cross-cultural exhibitions. The proponents of the "universal museum" make a big fuss about how important it is to be able to compare art of different times and cultures in one institution. But they rarely mount exhibitions that explicitly illuminate such correspondences and influences. The Met's recent Eternal Ancestors show of Central African reliquaries did open with a selection of objects from other world cultures, "thereby drawing upon related works from other parts of the Metropolitan's encyclopedic collections." That's a start. More is needed.

---Responsiveness to the current economic moment. People are hurting as they watch their dreams flame out in an economic firestorm. Cultural solace is needed, but not at $20-a-head. Instead of making people feel uncomfortable about exploiting the Met's "pay what you want" policy, the Met should actively encourage visitors to take advantage of this bargain---not just on free days (which create intolerably crowded conditions at the Museum of Modern Art, for example), but always.

Another way to respond to the current economic moment is to be aggressive in acquiring strong art that's now in weak hands (both private and corporate collections). One of the also-rans for the Met's top spot, Max Hollein, recently turned the financial downturn into a collecting upturn by acquiring "more than 800 art works for the Staedel Museum as corporate gifts from Deutsche Bank AG and DZ Bank Group AG this year," Bloomberg's Catherine Hickley reports. This can be a win-win for businesses (whose large collections are now seen as symbols of corporate excess) and museums (which can make these private troves more publicly accessible). Is it too much to ask these corporations for a cash gift to help support the maintenance of these collections?

---Fundraising fearlessness: Campbell should be shameless in exploiting the new-kid advantage, especially since the Met's just published 2007-08 annual report shows an operating deficit of $3.22 million, compared to a surplus of $2.63 million the previous year. (In June 2008, the end of the last fiscal year, the worst of the financial crisis hadn't even hit yet.)

The trustees appointed him. Now they've got to support him, insuring that he succeeds in these financially challenging times. That means opening wide their own wallets and beating the bushes for other supporters of an institution that is more relevant today than ever, because of its role in providing relief and sustenance for the financially injured.

Like the new President of our country, the Met's new director has got his work cut out for him. Best wishes to both for highly successful tenures.